WHISTLING SHADE

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Melanie Daniels Smokes a Cigarette in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds

by Aaron Brame

 

This is dramatic irony.

 

We know what she does not—

the crow, the horrid hop,

the jungle gym a host of claws.

 

She is dazed, pale of complexion.

Fetching in her green suit,

but facing the wrong direction.

 

We see the murderous bunch converge

in hibbeldy-hobbeldy disarray

while she worries that cigarette away.

 

Then one errant raven grabs

her eye, and irony ends.  In the

flock-darkened day, she sidesteps away

and is safe.

 

We know that a convenient escape

portends devastation,

a riot of claws. She knows

this too, and is not wrong.