"Why do little boys have to shoot the little birds?"
his father asks,
wiping sweat like teardrops
from an exhausted face.
My friend looks at me, dejected,
looks at the sparrow in my hand,
looks at his father's head, turned back
to his hands dropping seeds in the garden,
looks for a haunted second into his own soul,
and melts.

Trying to stomach vague emotion
we are instantly unsure of the moment
down by the creek,
in the tree-house,
so near to the source
where we first saw the nest,
and then the bird
and then the slingshot.

We walk in the silence of a sparrow
back to the moment.
My friend digs with his bare hands.
The dirt breaks easily.
"It is for the bird," he explains.

I climb to the nest to see the eggs.
They are not like the eggs
my mother buys in the supermarket.
They are small, dirty; not an easy, simple white.
"Do you think it was the mother?"
I ask. My friend
weighs the bird in his hands,
carefully plants it in the ground,
methodically sweeps the soil back over it,
before saying, "yes."

Remembering a story, I
build a raft out of twigs,
place the nest on my raft of twigs,
and watch it dissappear downstream,
before going home.