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Wednesday
All this cold weather has many dreaming of fleeing south to tropical climes. I therefore share this poem by my father about a dreamer who, in his lyrical imagining, transcends his earthbound limitations to fly “to cloudbanks over Rio/ And down the Amazon.” Let your own imagination soar as you read it:
The Hunchback Who Thought He Was a Swallow
By Scott Bates
The Hunchback who thought he was a Swallow
Slept in the city dump
Under a green umbrella
With feathers on his humpBy gray Popocatepetls
Of fuming cinder piles
And seas of emerald bottles
And Goodrich Tire isles
The Hunchback who thought he was a Swallow
Dreamed of summer gone
To cloudbanks over Rio
And down the AmazonTo big Brazilian Beetles
On Green Umbrella Trees
And Butterflies like petals
Floating over seas
The Hunchback who thought he was a Swallow
Flew south over telephone poles
Over perpendicular People
With hunches on their soulsOver tall cathedral crosses
To the isles below the wind
To plane with Albatrosses
And others of his kind
