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Posts Tagged ‘bird’

Today’s Headline

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on February 11, 2026| 8 Comments »


 
 
And then one day, while I read
aloud to my husband the news
and felt the widening hole in my heart,
he raised his hand to quiet me.
I followed his gaze out the window
to see in the yard a small fluffy thing
with black and white eyespots on its head.
A northern pygmy owl beside our door,
stout body slightly smaller than my fist.
It turned its neck a full half circle
to look at me with bright yellow eyes.
In an instant, I shifted from disgust
with the world to awe. Awe for this
fierce bespeckled miracle, this wonder
of feather and beak and claw, this
small being in the grass looking back
at me as if to say, Here is also the news.
How surprising the world can be.
How quickly, when I let it, amazement
overwrites my fear and makes
of the hole in my heart a home.

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Revival

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 27, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
For so long he lingers on the edge
of the feeder, as if he knows
I am willing to stand here for hours
to marvel at his bright yellow forehead,
the white patch on his wings—
such an ecstatic thing to watch
this first evening grosbeak
to ever find a way to our yard.
Aren’t you beautiful, I tell him.
He raises his head. I swoon
with raw joy, with full-bodied
love for this bird, for this day,
for this world with its wings.
Was it really just this morning
I was weeping?
 

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One Clearing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 22, 2025| 4 Comments »


 
 
every day I dismantle its nest,
that fear that wings darkly
into my thoughts

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Return

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2025| 2 Comments »


 
 
There was a time I wondered
if I would ever want
to open my eyes again—
today, I can’t stop falling in love
with the glossy black back
of the blackbird, the bright
crimson hues on its wing,
the light song that tumbles
like praise from its beak
as if to say, we are made
to return, we are made to sing.

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Steadfast

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 19, 2025| 12 Comments »



Though a cold
wind is howling,
we’re not birds
without wings—
and as long as we
have voices
let us sing together,
sing of freedom,
sing what’s true,
let us sing.

  • “birds without wings” is from John Lewis’s speech, January 9, 2005, at the Kennedy Center, at a choral tribute honoring Dr. Martin Luther King

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And Then, All at Once, Song

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on January 18, 2025| 8 Comments »




in the barren cottonwood tree
dozens of birds, all of them still,
as if, like me, they are enthralled
doubtful they could ever improve
on all this glorious silence

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One New Teacher

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on December 13, 2024| 3 Comments »


 
 
while I sit and stew about the world,
the bird across the river
never ceases in its singing

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So I Spend It Again

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on October 3, 2024| 8 Comments »




Before sleep, I touch it again,
that moment this morning
when I slipped out before sunrise
and sat in the pale blue light
and watched a lone heron
trace the curve of the river
before disappearing behind
golden cottonwoods.
It lasted, what, three seconds?
But those instants of awe
have returned to me again
and again like a coin I spent
on something beautiful
only to find, by what miracle?
it returns to burn a hole
in my pocket again.


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While Hiking on Lizard Head Pass

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 23, 2024| 15 Comments »


 
I forgot, today, to be sad.
Perhaps, more truly,
the song of the hermit thrush
ringing through the alpine meadow
gathered me into its echoing
and lifted me out of myself
and landed me fully in the field
where the green corn lilies
reached up to my waist.
While listening to the thrush,
I forgot how things fall apart,
held as I was by the long
whistled song, haunting and rich,
flute-like and clear as it pealed
through the spruce, honest
as any church bell, urgent
as a gong, holy as a woman
set free by a song.

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Rapture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2024| 10 Comments »

 
Beside the river we stop mid-step, stilled
by sharp, shrill notes that hammer the air,
pip-pip-pip-pip-pip-pip.
And though we don’t see the whimbrel,
we train our eyes toward the leaves
from which the sound came, and we listen.
Listen longer. Our bodies still, until,
once again, we hear the call.
It’s not beautiful, no, but insistent.
Like a teacher who smacks a ruler to her palm
to call the class to attention.
Only now do I look back and wonder
if this is a kind of heaven—not the call itself,
but the listening that comes after,
the way we stop, enthralled together,
our senses stripped of self, our bodies
tuning with wonder, thrill lacing
our spellbound silence as we slip
through the narrow gate of amazement
and more wholly into the world.

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