From WTP Vol. VI #2

Mockingbird
By Susan Dworski Nusbaum

Under the bronze Buddha’s eye,
too many cellphone-talkers, crowds at the koi pond.
Hurrying from the Botanical Gardens,

I’m stunned by the song of a plump grey bird
perched on a palm branch, trilling
a nigun like a cantorial soloist.

Catching his bead of eye,
I whistle an improvisation into the air
changing pitch and rhythm with each phrase.
And bubbling from his feathery throat,

a stream of my own fragmented song,
a cantillation winding itself into my ear,
becoming beautiful,
heard and answered.

Susan Dworski Nusbaum’s poetry collection, What We Take With Us, released by Coffeetown Press in 2014, was a finalist in the Brittingham/Pollack Prize Competition. Her second poetry collection, Open Wide, the Eye, was released June 1, 2016 (Coffeetown Press). Her work has appeared in numerous publications including The Connecticut Review, Poetry East, Nimrod International Journal, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Chautauqua, Harpur Palate, Wisconsin Review, The Sow’s Ear, Earth’s Daughters, The Buffalo News, and A Celebration of Western New York Poets (2014).