On Hearing Finches Singing in the Rafters of My Parking Garage
Unseen, but shrilly whistling
in the corners of the low slung
concrete ceiling that looms heavy
over rows of empty cars, as if
calling to the bicycles locked
tight beside the rat-traps and the
pile of junk abandoned by a
long-forgotten tenant, while
seeming not to notice that
outside the hulking structure
built to hide cars from the winter,
the sun has started leaking through
the curtain of gray cloudbanks, to
arouse the blue-eyed Marys in
their beds beside the sidewalk from
what seemed an endless slumber,
sing the birds.
Dan Berick is a writer based in Cleveland Ohio, a husband, father, and lawyer, and a graduate of Columbia University and The University of Chicago. His recent work has appeared in Gulf Stream Magazine, The Storms, The Interpreter’s House, One ART, Epistemic Literary, The Pierian, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Rivanna Review, FULL HOUSE Literary, 34th Parallel Magazine, Cerasus Poetry Magazine, and Citywide Lunch, and is forthcoming in Santa Barbara Literary Journal and The Argyle Literary Magazine.
Unseen, but shrilly whistling
in the corners of the low slung
concrete ceiling that looms heavy
over rows of empty cars, as if
calling to the bicycles locked
tight beside the rat-traps and the
pile of junk abandoned by a
long-forgotten tenant, while
seeming not to notice that
outside the hulking structure
built to hide cars from the winter,
the sun has started leaking through
the curtain of gray cloudbanks, to
arouse the blue-eyed Marys in
their beds beside the sidewalk from
what seemed an endless slumber,
sing the birds.
Dan Berick is a writer based in Cleveland Ohio, a husband, father, and lawyer, and a graduate of Columbia University and The University of Chicago. His recent work has appeared in Gulf Stream Magazine, The Storms, The Interpreter’s House, One ART, Epistemic Literary, The Pierian, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Rivanna Review, FULL HOUSE Literary, 34th Parallel Magazine, Cerasus Poetry Magazine, and Citywide Lunch, and is forthcoming in Santa Barbara Literary Journal and The Argyle Literary Magazine.
