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This poem is taken from PN Review 116, Volume 23 Number 6, July - August 1997.

Two Poems Joe Francis Doerr


Sestina For The Birds

We sit on the porch swing
and listen to the mockingbird
while April drinks the rain
just starting to fall
in long and sodden whispers
around the hedges.

Some wrens in the hedges
chirp like the chains of the porch swing
while we speak in whispers.
The spry mockingbird,
in whistles that rise and fall,
serenades the rain.

In an eavesdropping rain
of tiny blossoms, the hedges,
...


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