It’s a large Laundromat with a glass front.
In the summer they keep the street doors
wide open and you can hear people
arguing on the pay phones outside,
or congregating in front of the grocery
store we call Rotten Foodtown. Not a lot
of air-conditioning around here. The sparrow
must have strayed in through the open doors. I
didn’t notice it until it hit
the plate glass behind my seat, trying
to fly out, and rebounded stunned at my feet,
a soft heap of feathers with winking, alarmed
eyes. Hard to tell if it was injured or only
shocked. No more shocked than I—my heart took
on the lightness of the bird. What to do—
what to do? This sudden collision
of wings with human things made me want
to turn away, as if from unseemliness.
However, my duty was clear. A vague
memory of having been told never to touch
a bird with bare hands made me beg a rag
from the phlegmatic Laundromat attendant. As I
enclosed it, the sparrow fluttered slightly
and then was still while I carried it—ran
with it—to a triangle of greenery
at a nearby intersection of streets, reminding
myself my role was only courier between worlds,
my hope only good one bird at a time.