American Robin

Norman Minnick

The American robin

hops across the rooftop

and stops at the edge

to look at me

sitting in the sun

cooking myself,

reading poetry,

and dreaming of the good life.

This bird wants nothing

to do with me.

I have never heard a robin

make such noise.

Is it laughter?

Is it scorn?

Or is a lover near?

It looks like it is time

to clean the gutters.

Norman Minnick’s first collection of poems, To Taste the Water (Mid-List Press, 2007), won the First Series Award.  Of this collection, Robert Bly says, "There is a rare quiet and seriousness here... [Minnick] is always looking out, and some dark thing hovers just at the edge of the page.”   Norman is editor of Between Water and Song, an anthology of younger poets, forthcoming in 2009 from White Pine Press. His poems are forthcoming in Zone 3, Lyric, Blue Mesa Review, and the anthology And Know This Place: Poetry of Indiana.   He lives near Indianapolis and teaches Language Arts at Fountain Square Academy.

Return