I was sitting beside my mother on the couch,
knitting a blanket for my girl. My mother held
the yarn in her lap, a cloud of muted pinks.
Outside, the tall dry grasses weaved
in golden evening light. A Western Warbling Vireo
rambled on in its jumbled, warbly way. Mom spoke
of her plans for dinner the next night
and I knit two, purled six, knit two, purled six.
She guided the soft wool through her fingers,
keeping just the right amount of slack. I felt
such a tide of love for her. Wanted to tell her
I’m sorry for every time I’ve been hardened,
every time I’ve pushed her away instead
of pulling her close. I wanted to whisper
the love beyond words, some sentence true
as the sweetness I felt today sitting beside her
in the sun in the grass while we waited
for a Belted Kingfisher or Northern Yellow Warbler
to fly across the pond. But to name a feeling is so
much harder than naming a bird. So when the row
was done, I rested my head on her shoulder, closed
my eyes and nuzzled in. There was only softness
in me then. I’d like to think she translated what
I meant. Just as I knew what she was saying to me
with each length of unspooling yarn: I know
how you love me. I know your heart. I love you, too,
my girl. By the time we rose, we were held
by the dark. Even the swallows were quiet.
Posts Tagged ‘birds’
The Conversation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, conversation, daughter, forgiveness, knitting, love, mother, naming on June 3, 2026| 4 Comments »
Ritual
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, blank verse, holiness, losing the separate self, miracle, sonnet, swallows on May 20, 2026| 9 Comments »
As if the losing makes us more of what we are.
It’s not as if the clouds were parted and
some waterfall of golden light poured forth.
No rainbow smeared its hues across the storm-
bruised sky. No wondrous star. No kings with gold.
No angel choir. The sun did not stand still.
No burning bush. No parted seas. No feast
of fish and bread. Sometimes the aching heart
wants blatant, flagrant proof of holiness.
Tonight it was the swallows as they keeled
and curved, converged, dispersed and re-appeared
that altered me. Though truly, it was not
the birds and more the watching as they swooped,
the watching till the watching self dissolved
and the world was only space and darkling wings.
Alteration
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged birds, change, mind, thoughts, transformation on August 22, 2025| 8 Comments »
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.
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.