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Peter Gizzi

How to care for a small bird

for Elizabeth Willis

Given the baby bird crisis, what if
each child were delivered a bird

having tumbled from its nest

Two major problems evolve
One is feeding it

another preparing it for the wild

But before you build
a home of newsprint and yarn

try putting it back where it came
Remember its fear, think of its shock

to not be dead

beset in a hand
not yet full grown

moving through space
doing the best it can

Peter Gizzi

photo copyright © Lisa Jarnot 1998

This poem is taken from Artificial Heart, published by Burning Deck Press, 96 pp., ISBN 1-886224-21-8. Distributors: Small Press Distribution, 1341 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA 94710, and Spectacular Diseases, 83b London Rd., Peterborough, Cambs. PE2 9BS.

Peter Gizzi was born in 1959 and grew up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His publications include Periplum (Avec, 1992), and the chapbooks: Hours of the Book (Zasterle, 1994) and Music for Films (Paradigm, 1992). His editing projects have included the celebrated ‘little magazine’ o-blek: a journal of language arts (1987-93), the international literary anthology the Exact Change Yearbook (1995), and The House That jack Built - the Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan, 1998). He lives in Santa Cruz and teaches for the University of California.

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