MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick

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Conductor

and here it is again;
he goes out, in the half-dark,
to conduct the dawn chorus,
raising his hand here, lowering
it there, grabbing the notes
with a free hand and
redistributing them with a
flourish, in the slightly,
ever so slightly, brightening sky

and they cock their feathered heads and
look at him most curiously, this
conductor of birds, his cheeks
buffeted by the cold, trousers
worn at the knees, who would
seek to form this performance
greeting the sun, stirring the
notes with his fingertips, spreading
them, golden, across the sky
until the concert is done and they
scatter with a burst of wingsto forage breakfast

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MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick has been published in Chronogram, Obsolete! Magazine, The Mom Egg, MoonLit, Make Room for DADA, Thick With Conviction, Clapboard House, Cavalier Literary Couture, Torrid Literature, Contemporary Literary Horizon, The Westchester Review, Cheap and Easy Magazine, and The Lake. Forthcoming in the Echo Room.  She lives in Peekskill, New York, with her husband and three sons.