Page 17--Poem About The Stork--Adam Lizakowski

It is hard to image a world without the stork.
Your long red legs, beak and white feathers.
When I was very young my mother told me about you,
I listened to her stories,
you were described to babies.

But today the young people made love
did not even think about you standing on one leg
on the banks of murky water
or clattering from the high chimney.

In my dreams I see you circling about a pond.
The hay smells so good,
the world seems to be so happy,
a dog looks straight at you.

And like the old Odysseus come back to your Ithaca,
with your sharp beak like a sword
counting things on the face of Earth,
what do you think?

For centuries people talked about you
as a symbol of sexual productivity.
But you are so real even though you are from
the fable stories kingdom. I believed in you
when I saw for the first time a couple
disappearing in a pile of hay.