Detroit Pheasant 

Michael Lauchlan 

From a window, the boss calls to us

where we load his truck with bricks.

“Turn around fellas-look.”

A pheasant wades through the brown grass

across the street, vanishing

and emerging from the tangle.

A shed leans near a phone pole.

Bumpers glint from the weeds.

Blocks from the old foundation

angle through the earth.

The pheasant paces his courtyard.

We have killed the city which lived here.

The hieroglyph of its streets and rails

has joined the ancient lost tongues.

Buds unfold on a dwarf maple.

A rooster hollers.