by Madelaine Nerson MacNamara © 2013
Out of all the squillions of footsteps received
The pavement in Paris is pining for me.
I know this to be true, ever since the day
You assert that nobody, no one is indispensable.
And I don't believe you. As surely as I live
I know my father, mother, brother are indispensable.
I rebel, protest, indignant. You brook no argument.
Untypically I don't insist. You mean well
Someone must have died, you're trying to explain.
You answer all my whys, take me out for walks.
Just beyond the corner of Avenue Victor Hugo
And Rue de Longchamps, a cleaners to the right
Why do they clean clothes when the laundryman
Comes once a week for them? I help Mum to sort them.
She ties the tricky knot on the sheet that bags them.
To the left a huge plane tree, roots and base of trunk
Cradled in metal bars. Why? And who'd cut it down?
And why? And why does it need watering?
We halt suddenly. On the ground the monstrous racket
Of a dozen small brown birds bickering over crumbs. Why?
You lecture: sparrows always fight, they're sparrows
That's their name. I'd not known birds had names.
Apart from pigeons of course. Now how would you catch one?
Something else I hadn't thought about!
A great hope rises. ‒Well, how?! ‒Pinch of salt on their tail...
Disappointment sixty years on stings even sharper!
School begins, you pick me up, streets are like rivers
I'm not to cross alone. Holding your hand like taking a ferry.
Before you reach the edge I'm there, race back to you three times
Amazed you reckon for Mother the mileage on my soles.
My friends make their own way home, you still collect me.
One day, we wait at the bus stop on the Champs Elysées
A pigeon shits on your head. I'm shocked, disgusted
Unfazed you wipe, pronounce this a token of good luck.
I see luck instead in your soft black hat held on with a jet pin.
Later again, chancing to stroll down empty sunny Rue Spontini
We pass a long, grey building now a fire brigade barracks
You point out its opaque cellar windows, recall reports of screams
Heard far into the street from resistants being tortured.
I ask why, but you've stopped knowing all the answers.
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