Mockingbird, Mockingbird
by Jerry Ratch
I remember when I first came to California, I heard a mockingbird sitting in a tree, calling out in the names of other birds. It was down in L.A. I was staying at my brother's house in San Gabriel and driving in every day to the campus at UCLA to go to school there.
Immediately, when I got to California, I inherited the sense of imitating those calls of the other, like that. It was the fall of 1963, in my sophomore year. That was the year that Jack Kennedy was killed in Dallas. The year that I was dumped by my first love. And that was the year that I began to write.
Mockingbird, mockingbird, who are you calling? Is it me? Is it me? Is it me?
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Strange connection to this piece. I was just cast in a production of To Kill A Mockingbird, and I couldn't help but pull something from this.
I think the bird is calling, "Dress Barn! Dress Barn!"
.....
(nice one, Jerry)
"Immediately, when I got to California, I inherited the sense of imitating those calls of the other, like that."
I like the cadence of this sentence a lot. Well crafted.