Central Park West
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Amidst the runners, cyclists, and dog-walkers,two sparrows land on a nearby path,one aflutter, the other calm. A mating ritual?I wonder, but soon see it's a mother
and her chick, a hungry chick at that,the hopping about, the near-reckless energy,the impatient, beating wings, all in anticipationof a meal. Neck arched, the chick soon reaches
upward while the mother's beak openswith food. An hour later, I'm with my mother,eating in a not-so-good Italian restaurant on 9thand 55th. Soon, we'll be off to a play,
but for now, while our meals heat,it's my mother who can't sit still, who reachesfor her bag and pulls out photosfrom her recent trip to Mexico. I study them
as she rattles on, but look up, surprised,when she says, That's it. No more traveling.I'm too old. At the theater we take our seats,and perhaps because it's warm here, the a.c.
not nearly strong enough, my mother fallsalmost instantly to sleep. Throughout the playher sleep continues, while my eyes switchfrom the stage to my mother to the cellist [End Page 105]
sitting in a balcony alcove with the otherinstrumentalists. In the dim lightit's the cellist's looseness I'm drawn to,how each draw of the bow is lithe, lovely
as any dancer's move. In mid-life I longto face the world like that: full of grace,my work something like a song. At the parkthis morning, the mother sparrow flew off
suddenly and the chick was left alone.Immediately it bawled, over and over,and it was more than obvioushow this could have been any child
of any species. A moment laterthe mother returned with more food,the crying stopped, the sweet feedingcontinued. A dog then arrived,
barked, lunged at the bird-pair,and the two, in survival mode, dashed off.My own instinct was to scold the dogfor disrupting—what shall we call it?
love?—for not knowing that it tooneeded a mother of some sort (that personholding the leash). After the play, my mother,waking, swears she caught most of it,
and I glance for the last time at the deft cellist,now taking a humble bow. Outside it rains,and I hail a cab for my mother, tell the driverGrand Central. We quickly kiss, then wave,
she from inside the cab, me from the dampsidewalk. Soon, the subway whisks meuptown, where the park has emptiedfrom the afternoon rain, where the rain, [End Page 106]
like the dog this morning, has caused a grandscattering. Here I am, I say, as if to answermy mother calling me from the distanceof her train ride home. [End Page 107]
Elizabeth Poliner's poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Seneca Review, and elsewhere. A fiction writer as well, she is the author of Mutual Life and Casualty, a novel in stories. She teaches creative writing at Hollins University.
