I look at them differently now,
especially on slow mornings
before the sparrows realize
I have refilled the feeder,
and when the folded paper gets tossed
on my flowering begonias
but I am not upset.

They are God-spirits:
same man at Sam’s Club
marking my receipts
as I have come to expect;
bent woman emerging
from a tired heap
of a car at Whole Foods;
child screaming
down the sidewalk
in a language I do not know.

I have not always
had eyes that leap
outside my mind.

©Janet Lynn Davis

First published in Gin Bender Poetry Review, 2004.

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