89 Birds poems

Gregarious in hunger, a flock of twenty turn circles like whorls of barbed wire, no spot below flown over uncanvassed. The closer to death the closer they come, waiting on wings with keen impatient perseverance, dark blades lying in wake until age or wound has turned canter into carcass or near enough for them to swoop scrupulous in benediction, land hissing, hopping, tearing, gorging. no portion, save bone, too durable to digest. What matters cannot remain.

Now the passenger pigeons flock across the sky, Plunging the Central Valley grasshopper into darkness As the Snake River sucker pushes upstream And the golden toad relaxes. A passing skiff Startles a lone gravenche in Switzerland, Just as a pair of blue pike swerve To avoid an anchor. The harelip sucker Stays on course. A phantom shiner Might have swerved to snap up a three-tooth caddisfly, Or even Blackburn’s weevil, but it’s hard to tell Why the white-winged sandpiper wheels At the distant warble of a black-footed parakeet. Gould’s emerald has a tiny, ferocious heart. Domed Mauritius tortoises are clannish, Often clashing with saddle-backed Mauritius tortoises, Though the saddle-backed Rodrigues tortoise Enjoys friendly relations with the domed Rodrigues tortoise. The Santa Fe Island tortoise keeps to itself, brooding Over its sufferings. The Japanese wolf sniffs the air. The Tasmanian wolf bursts into a sprint, The Arabian ostrich could outpace a sprinting bicyclist, And the legs of the sprinting red gazelle blur beneath it, Like the rapidly beating wings of the Kosrae crake. The Kosrae starling is nesting. In one tree The Cascade funnel-web spider lays a trap, While in another, the American chestnut moth Sleeps fitfully. The dodo is too trusting. The laughing owl can be heard across the island. The roar of the Caspian tiger resounds in a canyon. Children shudder at the sound of the Bombay lion. But not even the Caribbean monk seal Hears the Caribbean monk seal mite silently make Its home in the manner of the passenger pigeon mite, Burrowing into the ear canal. The warm river water Through which the Durango shiner darts Reflects a spectacled cormorant. On drafts of air A dusky seaside sparrow rises. Its shadow falls On a school of stumptooth minnows. The sunlight Barely filters down to a Bodensee-kilch, But a red-headed green macaw glimmers. The Kona grosbeak filches fruit from volcanoes Sloping down to the shore where Galápagos damsels Frolic and spawn. The bezoule makes a rare Appearance. Heath hens gather by the pond. Only when the North Island giant moa starts to wonder About what happened to the South Island giant moa Does the upland moa give any thought To the whereabouts of the eastern moa. Meanwhile, The coastal moa seems to have gone off After the heavy-footed moa, which follows In its turn the tracks of the crested moa, Wandering the islands looking for Mantell’s moa. None of them have seen a bush moa in a while. Even as the quagga poses for its photograph, The St. Croix racer is slithering out of the frame In eager pursuit of a big-eared hopping mouse. This may be the moment the Queen of Sheba’s gazelle Takes its leave, along with the Atlas bear, The Palestinian painted frog, and several others. The aurochs left long ago. The lapping waves Echo the strokes of the sea mink, but like The Japanese river otter, it’s nowhere To be seen. What will the confused moth do? The same as Darwin’s rice rat. Years go by, And the Martinique macaw flies through none of them. Melville might have encountered a Nuka Hiva monarch, But Nabokov never pinned a Xerces blue. Cloned, the Pyrenean ibex lived A few seconds more. The paradise parrot Sported the spectrum on its plumage. Bluebucks Only looked blue while alive. The Miller’s rail Survives in a painting. Labrador ducks ate mussels. The crescent nail-tail wallaby once was common. The thylacine appeared four million years ago. Rats killed off the mysterious starling.

High at the window in her cage The old canary flits and sings, Nor sees across the curtain pass The shadow of a swallow’s wings. A poor deceit and copy, this, Of larger lives that mark their span, Unreckoning of wider worlds Or gifts that Heaven keeps for man. She gathers piteous bits and shreds, This solitary, mateless thing, To patient build again the nest So rudely scattered spring by spring; And sings her brief, unlisted songs, Her dreams of bird life wild and free, Yet never beats her prison bars At sound of song from bush or tree. But in my busiest hours I pause, Held by a sense of urgent speech, Bewildered by that spark-like soul, Able my very soul to reach. She will be heard; she chirps me loud, When I forget those gravest cares, Her small provision to supply, Clear water or her seedsman’s wares. She begs me now for that chief joy The round great world is made to grow,— Her wisp of greenness. Hear her chide, Because my answering thought is slow! What can my life seem like to her? A dull, unpunctual service mine; Stupid before her eager call, Her flitting steps, her insight fine. To open wide thy prison door, Poor friend, would give thee to thy foes; And yet a plaintive note I hear, As if to tell how slowly goes The time of thy long prisoning. Bird! does some promise keep thee sane? Will there be better days for thee? Will thy soul too know life again? Ah, none of us have more than this: If one true friend green leaves can reach From out some fairer, wider place, And understand our wistful speech!

As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage, Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells — That bird beyond the remembering his free fells; This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age. Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells, Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage. Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest — Why, hear him, hear him babble & drop down to his nest, But his own nest, wild nest, no prison. Man's spirit will be flesh-bound, when found at best, But uncumberèd: meadow-down is not distressed For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

Not to conform to any other color is the secret of being colorful. He shocks us when he flies like a red verb over the snow. He sifts through the blue evenings to his roost. He is turning purple. Soon he'll be black. In the bar's dark I think of him. There are no cardinals here. Only a woman in a red dress.

They used to mass in the crowns of oaks on every street for blocks around but have gone elsewhere, the evening no longer gathered by their feathers but by the leaves, which blot whatever light is left to the sky. Whether we saw the crows as a barely worth mentioning image of death for the way they took over branches with perfect authority, whether, where did I hear it, their numbers were thinned by disease, nothing avails. They are missing, the crackle of wings against the weight of their flight, beaks that broke open broadcasting any scrap of news. Like our children, they carry off whole years, like the wind-borne thought of cries never welcome enough day or night in our ears.

For days now a red-breasted bird has been trying to break in. She tests a low branch, violet blossoms swaying beside her, leaps into the air and flies straight at my window, beak and breast held back, claws raking the pane. Maybe she longs for the tree she sees reflected in the glass, but I'm only guessing. I watch until she gives up and swoops off. I wait for her return, the familiar click, swoosh, thump of her. I sip cold coffee and scan the room, trying to see it new, through the eyes of a bird. Nothing has changed. Books piled in a corner, coats hooked over chair backs, paper plates, a cup half-filled with sour milk. The children are in school. The man is at work. I'm alone with dead roses in a jam jar. What do I have that she could want enough to risk such failure, again and again?

Beyond is a brightness I am not equal to Yet what I see Turns into what I want, And to bring nothing but this body To pass through The one thing between Myself and what I crave, Almost done, the world a ruin Of leaves, winter at the throat, My song over and over until So familiar I can do What I am about to do While you who rise from the table And walk from room to room Will remember only the sound Of what cast herself through All that glass, instead of the song That was sung until finally You would ask to know more.

A Bird, came down the Walk - He did not know I saw - He bit an Angle Worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw, And then, he drank a Dew From a convenient Grass - And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass - He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad - They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head. - Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer Home - Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.

the truth flies     hungry, at least     and otherous, of which—though it may be one—Kafka said troublingly, it has many faces it’s the faces one wants, tripping the light shadows of     its skin colours      of its wordy swiftness, angry and solvent, of its loud remarks as of feeding flocks                      one year, one, among the smallest birds in the Northwest, flew into the house     a darting, panic thought     at the walls and grasses     perched on the top right corner of the frame of Tom Field’s painting wherein adulterous Genji is found out—so Lady Murasaki reads from her blue scroll—and permitted me to take it in my hand     soft, intricate mind     honouring     and lift it out into the air and the next year, again, one flew into the house, almost certain, like a visitor, gold-crowned     winged floating about     odd discoveries     and alighted on the brim of the lasagna dish     my hand trembled as I took it up and moved slowly to lift it out of the window     into the air     a kind of thinking     like everybody else looking     for a continuing contravention of limits and of substance for Sharon Thesen