Sparrows

All is work and peck, work and peck;
for these sparrows,
the world is a feast,
then suddenly, unexplainable flights
sired by slight movements;
they are enactments of neurosis,
trauma
yet living it
they are cured
in the feast of the world.

Allan Johnston is the editor of the Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education. His poems have appeared in over sixty journals, including Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle, and Rhino. He is the author of one full-length poetry collection, Tasks of Survival (1996) and a chapbook, Northport (2010), and has received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and First Prize in Poetry in the Outrider Press Literary Anthology competition.