Small Flawed Grace

On the rough pavement, a sparrow, small.

Broken wing, a jagged stick

of bone pushing through fine down.

A wet, grey bead of sorrow.

It twitched, a tiny mechanism failing,

right there, where feet pass, uninterested.

No hawk above, no car had done it.

Just this, a small, unasked-for wound.

And I stood there, wanting to yell

at the vacant sky, the way

you curse an empty room.

For a god, or just some cold, hard luck

that makes a thing this frail

suffer, with no one to make it stop.

Just the concrete, holding the bird up.