Baby Birds on Beach by Howie Good

The doctor called the results
of the blood test “concerning.”
You tell me this over the phone

with long pauses between words.
I stop walking while I struggle
to absorb what you’re saying.

You’re saying if Gavin has what
the doctor thinks he might have
he won’t live past the age of 10.

Evening has turned everything
a sludgy gray. Warning, the sign
says, Baby Birds on Beach.

Their eyes are dark in color,
just like when they were alive.



Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.