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TREASURES
Walking the streets of
Brookline, how often I have
come across broken vacuum cleaners-
discarded, garbage day- and I
laugh because I know that half
of them will be picked up by
my father, fixed, and given to a
grateful neighbor- "Can you believe
it," he will say," A broken switch!" or
"A penny got stuck in the
blades!" and then I'd hear that Depression-
era chuckle, him shaking his head,
wondering at the ways of
my world. Less often
I walk the streets of
Brookline and see along the
curb or by the side of a building, a
bird lying dead, a little sparrow, not
much left, flattened, just a ruffle of
feathers really, and I wonder- a
cat? a car? was it pushed from its
nest?-and I think how no one can
fix it, though we know all the
parts, beak, eyes, wings,
cells, down to the invisible gossamer
strands of DNA, and if we tried, even my Dad
who can fix pretty much anything, it
wouldn't work, it will never fly again, because this
was a miracle-so where are the
crowds on the sidewalk, the all-night vigils, like
when the face of the Virgin Mary is discovered
in a stain on some dirty window?- yes, a miracle,
this shadow that once soared,
this flattened thing, this ruffle of feathers.
February 2, 2007