Lost Among the Hours
Alan Britt

WILD PARAKEETS OF FLORIDA

(For Duane Locke)

He parted the wall
so that we could enter.

He melted mortar from the bricks
supporting our future superstitions.

Ultimately, this allowed us to enter.

But, once inside,
we realized that genocide is a disease
more rampant than AIDS,
genocide ancient as DNA.

And now we’re petitioning
what new stadium, exactly,
which new sports franchise,
while our children
slumped in overcrowded classrooms
are herded by underpaid sheepdogs?

This can’t be why Blake
parted the Red Sea.

I’m telling you,
Blake was an escaped convict
from the 18th Century
with nowhere else to go.

He reminds me of a poet
who once watched pale blue parakeets
blistering the pine trees
of St. Petersburg, Florida, 1969.