House Sparrow — Summary

Dave BontaCheerful

They said you were blue so I got you a card. It sings when you open it. The clouds move, & the usual stars & crickets: a card like a garden, missing only the mated pair of primates flinging their feces at some snake. I’ve just flown out from the tree beside the tree beside the tree & there you are, your eye on my hugger-mugger life. I have to say you’re beginning to creep me out. Where did that enormous coffee mug come from & why is it wearing a leopard’s spots? And God, much as I appreciate you holding my world in your mitt, I have to ask: whose damn blue egg is that?

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The poem is spoken by a house sparrow who has stumbled on a strange human object: a musical greeting card, given to someone who was feeling low. From the bird's point of view, the card is baffling. It sings, the clouds move, and there are stars and crickets, like a tiny garden that only lacks Adam and Eve and their snake. The sparrow, flitting in from "the tree beside the tree beside the tree," is both curious and uneasy at being watched by a giant human eye.

The tone is playful and dry. The sparrow complains that the human is "beginning to creep me out" and wonders about a huge coffee mug with leopard spots. Under the jokes, though, there's a gentle tenderness. The card was meant to cheer someone up, and the sparrow is, in a way, part of that comfort. The final question, about whose "blue egg" this is, is funny and puzzling at once. It may hint at the blue mood of the opening, or at how odd the human world looks from outside it.

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