Though you’ve tried
to fit into
a thousand
small boxes,
perhaps comes
the day when
you’re opened
by grief or by
love, and your
thoughts unstitch
from what you knew,
and your mind
begins to rhyme
with sky, becomes
spacious enough
whole flocks
of bluebirds
can fly right
through, and
for a time you
stop trying
to make sense
of things, you
simply yield
to being
a home for
the ecstasy
of wings.
Posts Tagged ‘birds’
Alteration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, change, mind, thoughts, transformation on August 22, 2025| 8 Comments »
Watching the Goslings
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, goslings, hopelessness, tenderness on May 29, 2025| 2 Comments »
Those milky, down-fluffy, bumblesome
bodies stumbling in tall green grass—
just seeing the goslings, I feel it, a rush
of tenderness, an inexorable
softening. Not that I brought
my hopelessness here on purpose.
Just that I seem to always carry it
with me these days. Not that the baby
geese make anything better.
Except they do, opening me to the story
of life beyond myself, beyond my kind.
Suddenly I sense it everywhere,
the great story. There, in the bitter
scent of the chokecherry; there,
in the stonefly climbing the coyote willow;
there, in the eagle that would eat the rabbit.
Everywhere the story of what it is
to be alive. And in me, a tenderness
for all of it, a tenderness that grows and grows
until I can be tender even with my own
hopelessness, my own bumbling. No antidote
for humanness, but oh, this tenderness.
Matriarch
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, family, love, mom on November 17, 2024| Leave a Comment »
From the hallway, I hear her
growl her disappointment
when my nephew’s football team
fumbles the ball. And by the time
I enter the door to find her
riveted to the livestream,
she’s squealing, whooping,
calling out his name,
her voice a bright wing
that careens through the room,
a raven let loose from a cage,
and I can’t help but fall
more in love with my mother
who crows with wild, unparalleled joy,
a noisy, exuberant ecstasy,
and I realize I am sky—
as if the wings of her love
shape the terrain where they fly.
She cheers louder for my nephew;
that love makes the space inside me
even more vast, even more beautiful.
Not a Still Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aliveness, birds, life, may, spring on May 23, 2024| 10 Comments »
As if they’d been waiting for the wild wind to wane,
the mother and father goose guide their goslings
on a walk through the field, a dozen small graylings
bumbling between them, and the May evening light
has not dulled yet to dim so every new birch leaf
and every spring blade and every bright red willow stem
seems to outgleam itself with aliveness, and the air
blurs with hummingbirds, whirls with violet-green swallows,
and it’s spring, my god, it’s thrumming inside me, this life saying
Live, live, live, live, as everything I am unfurls and expands,
even the parts I thought seemed dead, yes even the sticks
now swell into bud, erupt into reckless bloom.
The Radiant Now
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, breakfast, marriage, present, spring, time on May 15, 2024| 6 Comments »
Beside the flower bed, still unplanted,
we sit on the porch with coffee and toast
and watch the field where the swallows
swoop and dive in their own ritual of breakfast.
Hummingbirds chase each other across the grass,
small bodies like darts that pin us
to this moment. Would I, if I could, pin us
to this radiant now when the whole world
is greening and the morning sun paints
gold on every surface? Or is its value
partly based in how quickly it passes?
So while I can, I sink into this measure
of bliss, cup still warm in my hand,
and breathe in the sweet, sharp scent of grass.
Someday soon, there will be flowers.
Learning to Honor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, cranes, evolution, sandhill cranes, time, wonder on November 20, 2023| 10 Comments »
For ten million years, the sandhill cranes
have trumpeted in their rich, low pitch
and flown over grasslands
as they did today
while we wove our car beneath their V—
oh, their long slender necks,
the slant architecture of their wings—
such elegant things
developing since the Eocene.
How beautifully small I felt then,
a speck in big time,
so lucky to spend even an hour on this planet
at the edge of a marsh where perchance
the cranes are migrating south again
and the heart, astonished, unbidden,
leaps up in wonder and falls in love with life,
a gift of our own brief evolution.
Springing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, geese, innocence, joy, spring on May 17, 2023| 18 Comments »
All fluff and down,
the goslings bumble
in the damp green grass
and whatever was hard
in me softens and whatever
was clenched becomes loose
and I give in to the unruly joy
of watching baby geese
just learning to move.
How many other small moments
of triumph do I miss?
Oh heart, remember this.
Starlings in Winter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, friendship, skiing, starlings, winter on January 22, 2023| 4 Comments »
for Christie
Deep in the snowy woods,
we startle at the sound
of starlings as they braid
above the branches.
How often do I miss
the song of the moment?
But today, beside you
I could not miss
the sweet shushing of skis,
the sacred huff of breath,
the lyric of our laughter
and the strong refrain of my heart
as it wheeled like a starling,
a wild and soaring thing
drawn to fly with others,
ready to sing for no reason
except the joy of singing.
Three Present Progressives
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, haiku sequence, stars, sun on July 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »
letting the stars name me
after them—
unpronounceable things happen
*
building a throne
out of meadowlark song—
kingdom with no borders
*
holding hands with the sun
wishing it would go
to second base
Waiting for the Trill
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged be here now, birds, red wing blackbird, silence, waiting on May 1, 2020| 3 Comments »
Just a few steps from the house
I find a place to sit on a rock
and wait for the trill of the red wing blackbird.
I have waited twenty years to hear it here
in my back yard full of water and willows
and quiet. All day, though intermittent, I’ve heard it.
Funny how much I enjoy the waiting tonight—
perhaps because I know that eventually
the bright call will come. It is, perhaps, like a girl,
waiting through her first date for her first kiss—
she’s pretty sure it will happen, and now, after
years of waiting, she suddenly has
all the time in the world. In fact, the waiting
is delicious—like champagne, dry, with tiny bubbles.
Like summer’s first raspberries—a little too tart,
and yet sweet enough to eat another and another.
I sit in the goldening world and wait and wait.
I listen to the jays as they squawk and the warbler’s
sharp chirp. The wind teases my hair and I wait
until I forget I am waiting, simply noticing the world.
By the time I hear the familiar trill, it greets me
like the old friend it is, then it’s silent again.
The way the sun seems most lovely just before it’s gone,
that’s how the silence holds me.