In the factory where my father  
worked, there was for a time,  
a caged parrot named Roscoe. Roscoe  
was red & stood tall, perpetually peering  
out toward metal & laborer—& occasionally  
toward the children of the people  
who had long worked there.  
As children, our mother would  
drive my siblings & I to the factory 
& we’d stand in front of Roscoe’s 
cage near the punch-out machine  
& timecards, & we’d wait for him  
to speak. Roscoe’s special was  
Happy Birthday, curse words:
fuck you, asshole, bitch, & imitative,  
unplaced metallic sounds.  
The people there, as far as I know,  
took turns taking care of Roscoe— 
bird-shit duty as he echoed  
their human voice back to them.  

I returned home recently,
thinking of how far afield I am from where
I began—the year I worked
in the factory myself sweeping
metal shavings from the floor,
which stuck into the soles of my shoes
& I’d track metal home.

Today, I bounce
my baby nephew on my knee, who holds
my sister’s face in his own. I remember,
before Roscoe died, he lost his usual tricks.
Instead, he said: here, kitty kitty kitty.
& I wonder who in his life was he
trying to coax. I coax & coo at the baby
too, the songs I learned when I was young.
I watch his breath as he sleeps

say shhh shhh shhh.
I read recently we sent an uncrewed spacecraft
to the dark, far side of our moon, dubbed
Humanity’s Return. We have already earlier
begun the work of listening—soon
we will be retasked with looking
toward a different red trajectory.
Looking in the face of a new animal
to incline us toward our own.

When the factory went
under there was nothing for anyone
to take care of. No cage to clean,
or Roscoe to feed. No sound alarming
anything toward mimicry. No metal
to follow me back.

I am just as bad
in my own wanting. To see in the eyes
of a baby, or parrot—their memory—
that perhaps they coax & soothe themselves—
but to still feel the need to calm. I admit
to all of this, to thinking: wouldn’t return be nice,
to have more echoes—returns
of who we were when we thought
we didn’t know.