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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
July 10, 2005
Published as Poetry
in a WIP dated October 29, 2002.
© 2002 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Wood Duck, 1979
© 1979 by Bud Grossmann
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BIRD SHOT, BIRD BUMPED
What day is Owen’s birthday?
How were the pheasants you served for dinner?
I have fond memories of two pheasants.
One was on my grandparents’ Wisconsin farm
in the fall of ’64 when I was a high school sophomore.
Startled when the bird took flight, I began
blasting away before I’d properly shouldered
my 12-gauge. The gun kicked me in the biceps, and
for a week I wore a big black bruise
(evident only in phys. ed.,
at that cardigan time of year).
I could barely lift a text book.
I did bring down the bird, though,
a gorgeous ring-necked rooster.
The other was a hen, a decade down the road,
late summer in ’74. Frances smacked her with the car,
a ’69 Simca wagon Mom and Dad had just given us,
not twenty miles before. We’d picked up the Simca at
Gram and Gramp’s. (I can’t recall how we got there
from Indiana where I was finishing my B.A.
Perhaps we flew?) Mid-morning we were driving back
to Fort Wayne. Got as far as Columbus,
Wisc., when, wham! Fran hit that pheasant hen.
Feathers all over the French car’s grill. Picked up the
little birdie off the shoulder of State 16, popped her into
a picnic cooler, and illicitly carried the corpse
across two state lines
before having her for supper.
Could offer you one more pleasant, pheasant present,
but I’ll postpone it, until you’re sure you’re acquiescent.
♦
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