Another One

 

via Unsplash

One of my older birds-and-heartbreak poems is up now at The Last Word on Nothing. 

You can read it here.

One New Poem in SPROUT

 

I am so pleased to share that my birds-and-trauma poem "Window: White Pine" is out now in Issue 2: Edge of SPROUT, a self-described eco-urban poetry journal. This poem was previously featured in Scottish artist Clare Archibald's 2021 forest installation "Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness."

You can read the poem here.

One New Poem at LWON

Wes Hicks on Unsplash

An exciting announcement: I am now a contributor to the group science writing blog The Last Word on Nothing. If you are a science writer, you know why this is a big deal. If you aren't: trust me. It is. 

I'll be sharing my science poems, essays, and other work over there every few weeks. My first post—a new-old poem about birds and evolution and learning hard lessons—is here. 

You can sign up for weekly blog updates here and follow LWON on Facebook and Twitter. (It's always a good read; I recommend it.)

Another Bird Poem, If You Can Believe That

I'm honored to be a part of Monstering magazine's inaugural issue.

You can read my poem "Ketoconazole" here. It even comes with its own soundtrack.

Wow.

This is the November issue of mental_floss magazine. Inside is a fun adaptation of my jellybean story. That I wrote.

On the newsstand.

And that's amazing.

New Music from Squid Pro Crow: At Sundown, When I Am Busy

Here's the latest from Squid Pro Crow.
Words by me, music by Grant.


At Sundown, When I Am Busy
Remind me: 

mourning doves. Remind me always 
to live where they are. Remind me: 
that sound. 
That sound. Remind me. 
Mourning doves: that sound:

Remind me.

At Sundown, When I Am Busy

Remind me: 

mourning doves. Remind me always 
to live where they are. Remind me: 
that sound. 
That sound. Remind me. 
Mourning doves: that sound:

Remind me.


Listen here. Mourning dove drawing by Kathy Walker. 

A New Thing! Sort of!

It's not written down, exactly, but it is the latest offering from Squid Pro Crow:
 


Thirty
Maybe it approached gradually, 
Like the three-toed sloth 
In the zoo’s reptile house. 
I didn’t think the mossy thing 
Was real, or really coming, 
Until it was nearly upon me. 

Maybe it all showed up at once— 
So fast I’d never have seen it, 
Even if I knew where to look. 
One day last summer, I blinked. 
The empty feeder suddenly 
Offered two hummingbirds. 

Regardless of how, it happened. 
I recognized her this morning 
In the ladies’ room at work. 
She was washing my hands. 
I adjusted her tasteful earrings 
And smoothed her messy braid.


words by me; music and everything else by Grant.

The Grasshopper in Winter

The grasshopper on the ground is dead--
not by boot, or hooting bird,
or by sultry spider--
but dead
as the grass, passed away,
and the hop that ceased.

His armor is accounted for,
though curled in the afterlife
into some aquatic thing.
The hop is gone,
but perhaps in that small beyond,
he swims.




art: "The Warrior in Winter," by Julia Jeffrey

The American Dream

We wink at the fox
with the bird in his mouth;
"Clever fellow," we say.
But outrage dawns
with the sunrise sight
of a vacancy
in the henhouse.

The Lovesick Ornithologist Justifies Her Plane Ticket

Iron containing short nerve branches in the upper beak of birds may serve as a magnetometer to measure the vector of the Earth magnetic field (intensity and inclination) and not only as a magnetic compass, which shows the direction of the magnetic field lines. Whether this magnetic map is consulted, strongly depends on the avian species and its current motivation to do so...research has...suggested that magnetic compass and magnetic map sense are based on different mechanisms and are localized at different sites: The magnetic compass resides in the eye, the magnetometer for the magnetic map lies in the beak.
Dr. Gerta Fleissner





So that's it then, lovebird of mine:
our eyes alone won't do it. Point A
to B, I see it, sure,
but won't find my way to it.

I'll fly and fight and never tire
until this ocean's crossed;
but 'til we're mouth
to mouth, my dear, I'll be
as good as lost.



original bird-compass article here.
photograph by Claire

Interlude: Other People's Poetry

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,

but with stars in their black feathers,

they spring from the telephone wire

and instantly


they are acrobats

in the freezing wind.

And now, in the theater of air,

they swing over buildings,


dipping and rising;

they float like one stippled star

that opens,

becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;

and you watch
and you try

but you simply can't imagine

how they do it

with no articulated instruction, no pause,

only the silent confirmation

that they are this notable thing,


this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

over and over again,

full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,


even in the leafless winter,

even in the ashy city.

I am thinking now

of grief, and of getting past it;



I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard, I want



to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to be light and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.




-Mary Oliver

photograph by Jipps

Commute

The Volvo stops a few feet shy
of the crosswalk, the stop line,
the cracked door in the pavement.

Perpendicular to this drive, from the lawn
of the still-dark People's Bank, the ducks
head off to the marsh.

A young female stretches. She yawns, practically
pajama-clad in the entirety of her waking.

Her sister sits on all the good grass,
and she will not be moved.

A nip from somebody's mother
just as the light turns green,
and the brown birds pack up their night.






photograph by John Hanam

The Clock of Birds

"The Kaluli people use birds as a clock and a calendar. Bird calls wake them in the morning, and afternoon calls tell the people when it is time to gather for a meal. Planting and harvesting are started when particular birds are heard singing in the forest."

-from Rain Forests of the World


Then why shouldn't I
do the same? They have
their forest of souls, their songs
to lift the spirit, but I
have a field guide, and screens
in all the windows. It will
take time to learn the hours:
the mourning dove at seven,
and I don't know what that is
just after sunset. But should
I succeed, I will know my own home
better than any. I will sleep
when the owls instruct me.
But swallows and orioles can't
keep me here. In this old world
I am too young, and my lease
is nearly up. In three months,
new windows, new birdsong,
new hours.





more on the Kaluli relationship with birds here.
photograph by Sandra.

I Am Hearing Now

I am hearing now a new bird,
or perhaps an old bird's new song.
It is like small bells. The woods go silent.
From somewhere another bird answers.





photograph by Mariell Amélie

The Birds of Hyde Park

Chicago's winter is nine months long.
Wind fit to hollow
the cheeks of sweet children spins,
screaming, down each vacated street.
And screaming, too, from the dips
of the satellite dishes,
the birds of Hyde Park come home to roost.
Each nest is a mess of yesterday's vines,
each bird uncanny in a jungle
of cold wire. Argentina
is thirty worlds away.
From the topmost floor
of the busiest building you
can just see them landing,
great feathered limes in a bowl
of smoke and slate.





photograph by flickr user Justabird (Angie)
more about the Chicago's feral parakeets here

Deborah Digges, 1950-2009

Darwin's Finches
by Deborah Digges

1
My mother always called it a nest,
the multi-colored mass harvested

from her six daughters' brushes,
and handed it to one of us

after she had shaped it, as we sat in front
of the fire drying our hair.

She said some birds steal anything, a strand
of spider's web, or horse's mane,

the residue of sheep's wool in the grasses
near a fold

where every summer of her girlhood
hundreds nested.

Since then I've seen it for myself, their genius—
how they transform the useless.

I've seen plastics stripped and whittled
into a brilliant straw,

and newspapers—the dates, the years—
supporting the underweavings.


2
As tonight in our bed by the window
you brush my hair to help me sleep, and clean

the brush as my mother did, offering
the nest to the updraft.

I'd like to think it will be lifted as far
as the river, and catch in some white sycamore,

or drift, too light to sink, into the shaded inlets,
the bank-moss, where small fish, frogs, and insects

lay their eggs.
Would this constitute an afterlife?

The story goes that sailors, moored for weeks
off islands they called paradise,

stood in the early sunlight
cutting their hair. And the rare

birds there, nameless, almost extinct,
came down around them

and cleaned the decks
and disappeared into the trees above the sea.





Ms. Digges was scheduled to teach the first week of my master class this summer. I can only hope she has found her peace.

Half-Haiku: The Firebird Again

Without belief the phoenix
is just a bird on fire.




photograph by Zoolien

Ganymede's Petition to Hera

My lady, I swear to you,
I am not worth these eagles.
This is no cup that I have known,
My small hands cannot lift it.

My lady, I swear to you,
My flock has lost their eyes.
The wool has all been wasted.
My father died a thin man.

My lady, I swear to you,
My feet long for the dry earth.
My lord's most endless Titan thighs
are no home to my heart.




illustration by Lovis Corinth
more about Ganymede here

Also, The Woodpecker Is Not Too Bright

for Mr. Apron

O assailant of the phone pole,
you serve a most ambitious goal;
But you might want to stop
before reaching the top
Because that's where you'll get electrocuted.



photograph by Emily Hoyer