by Richard Collins
We invented a club called The Vultures
A place to misbehave and store our loot
With slingshots lifted from the five-and-dime
We hunted pigeons with our Wham-Os and balls of steel
When they tumbled to earth with soft flutter and thump
We rushed to scoop them up like fallen angels
Our intent was not to kill them but to stun
Then nurse them to health in cages for cooing
On the other side of the railroad tracks
Was the orange grove where lived my only friend
Joe Venator and his Hungarian baba yaga
Who cautioned us over bowls of borscht
To be careful when we rolled down the hillside
Onto the tracks in those fifty-gallon drums
To beware of the rats in our clubhouse
Composed of old tree stumps piled high on the side
To please stop hopping the trains to nowhere
Even though there was little elsewhere to go
To treat girls, when it came time to woo, better than birds
To do unto pretty pigeons as we to us would have them do
To be mindful of the neighborhood bullies
Who might wound us, rescue us, compel us to coo
Like the soft gray cherubs we sometimes murdered
Accidentally on purpose in pursuit of new pets
Now when I see railroad ties I hear Joe’s baba pray
And steel rails humming that summer we moved away.
Richard Collins grew up in California and has lived in a number of countries, including Romania, Bulgaria, and the UK. His books include No Fear Zen (Hohm Press), In Search of the Hermaphrodite (Tough Poets Press, 2024), and the forthcoming Stone Nest: Poems (Shanti Arts, 2025). He directs Stone Nest Zen in Sewanee, Tennessee.