Passer Domesticus

The same kind

that cheeps

and dust bathes

by my back door

on a late June day

in the English

East Midlands

will tuck

an unruly heap

of yellow grass

on a beam

in a white room

away from

Middle-Eastern heat,

build a nest

above a bed

where a mother

feeds her newborn,

flit under eves

where people speak

the ancient

and related tongues;

shalom, shalom,

salaam alaikum.

Roy Marshall