Humble Pied
BY JEFFREY JAMES IRCINK
A glint of light flits and dances
about his eyes as he stares
out the window, his mind awash
in a loneliness he created.
Through the glass panes he eyes
the uncommonly hushed pied butcherbirds—
but they haven’t spoken to him in ages.
Now, in his gloaming years
with none left to take notice,
the sounds of what he doesn’t hear are deafening.
Perhaps the birds – like he –
simply want to hear themselves sing
anew. To trip from his tongue
the erstwhile tunes of his youth…
How envious the pieds would be!
Jeffrey James Ircink
A sensible Midwest upbringing served Jeff well while traveling from Wisconsin to Bel Air, CA and points between throughout his career. He has worked on stage and film in Milwaukee, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Los Angeles, and his original plays have taken him to Belfast, Sydney, Manhattan, Seattle, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Dayton, Bel Air, Cedar Rapids and Milwaukee. Jeff has written, directed and produced several theater projects in Milwaukee, including Hashtag Mayhem and Strange Bedfellows, two of his plays have been published – Stan’s Addiction and Pass the Salt, Please (adapted into an award-winning short film), and he has written several one-man shows based on the lives and works of Dickens, Poe and Washington Irving while in his current position as a Life Enrichment Associate for the retirement community industry. Jeff’s original poetry has appeared in The Grindstone, Retrograde Review and his debut poetry chapbook, “Grace Notes from a Bohemian in Wanderlust”, was published in August 2023.
Jeff resides in the historic Village of Greendale in Wisconsin.
