Two Poems by Daniel Tobin

ANTHEM

Meleagris galopavo

Through the backyard of a shuttered home
the birds have come, an almost emblem
of the young Republic, more respectable
Ben Franklin believed than the bald eagle

that was like, he said, a man who lived
by sharping and robbing, a rank coward,
driven from the districts by little more
than sparrows; perched up in dead trees or,

too lazy to fish for himself, off to pursue
the self-won catch of the diligent osprey,
snatching it from hatchlings in their nest—
“Is this not the perfect token of injustice?”