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58 What Sings in the Garden Shines in the Sun The paint-can robot somebody built I don’t know how or why but it came with the house and it rules the world of the garden and the pleasant half-acre behind the house standing shining among the green beans and tomatoes and the corn standing shining in the summer heat reflecting light like a bonfire, or in the falling rain drumming to make a heartbeat for all of the town to hear, standing in the snow and fog—its dark eyes punched through by an awl perhaps forty years ago and the jagged mouth cut with a hacksaw or tin-snips for the maw within which a wren has found her way to nest for generations now her family filling the bucket head with yellow straw, twigs and long strands of horsehair and the silver of someone gone and so she flies in and out of the mouth today like a small speech the robot makes and I think of the loneliness of the soul inside the body and how it must be in there—pushing the sticks around, watching out for crows, hunting the ladybug and the night-crawler flying around alone while the paint-can robot sings in the garden saying only what the wren says with her wings: I’m going, I’m home, I’m going, I’m home. All day long—the paint-can robot scarecrow’s song. ...

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