Tag Archives: Birds

Coot-Swallow, Everyone!

Posted on by
Reply

Auguries require a due respect
to count for anything influencing deeds,
though reckoning backwards helps, as you’d expect,
convince us they relate to human needs.

To name the day for the first birds you see
is smarter than to study economics,
enough to recommend, it seems to me,
it over college, reading Sunday comics,

consulting stars, or running phrases on.
Exceeding science, it comes near religion.
I have a portent I can base this on,
my horse came in a winner on Crow-Pigeon.

————
Coot-Swallow, everyone!
It’s a glorious spring day here. A coot-swallow day, to name the day after the first two birds I saw after going outside this morning. I had provisionally thought today was Dove-Weathervane, but looking out the window does not count.

Springtime Near-Tree Neighbours

Posted on by
2

What are these jackdaws saying? I don’t know.
I need translations for the parts I hear.
The conversations of this smallest crow
come through my window loud and klaxon clear
but are more Greek than English to my ear.
These jackdaws lodge most seasons in the tower
of the giant church and grace the sunset hour
with flying squads whose aerial antics bring
them my applause, but now when blossoms flower
they nest as couples, celebrating Spring.

Canal-side Logarithms

Posted on by
2

Cat purred, ‘the log of minus one.’ ‘That’s undefined!’
the jackdaw yelled. He flew down, cawing foul.
He darted off before the cat’s claws fined
his rudeness. See the cat rear up and yowl

that the bird is absurd to think she speaks of math.
‘If I add that the log of zero is a limb
of Satan, then you are on a slippery path
of soggy rhythms leading to a swim

in waters dark as the proverbial Styx,’
the cat adds. See the jackdaw, unimpressed.
‘Next,’ he tells the cat, ‘you’ll claim to fix
the log of positive one at what’s professed

to be itself one, into some dumb allusion
you will make to mask your massive math confusion.

Flying Y over X over Teakettle

Posted on by
Reply

‘He will fly a monotonic logarithmic function,’
said the jackdaw on my left. The others laughed.
‘Before he takes off, better give him unction,’
said another. With a swooping flight she graphed
the dizzy fall she estimates I’ll fly
should I leave this roof where we are congregating.
At a signal that I miss, they swarm on high.
They look back to watch me follow. They’re still waiting.

Tipping Point

Posted on by
1

The squirrel presided. Daws danced. I arrived
from what they call The Nether World: the ground.
My fear of falling balanced by my need
to hear non-human wisdom, I held tight
to budding branches. I stood on a limb.
The squirrel called for order. Jackdaws in their hundreds
flew from the church and occupied the tree.
‘A song!’ one said. They made an awful noise.
‘In Human speech,’ the squirrel said. They complied.
They told me about balance, flight, and life.
I thanked them and prepared to climb back down
and saw other humans take away my ladder.

Skiagram Strokes of Morning Mercy

Posted on by
2

The duck song wakes me, singing our canal
into existence, snipping bolts of dark
from the cloaks the waking duck-and-coot cabal
flew in the face of nighttime in the park.

Crows fly until the sun, touched, tips the earth
so light leaks in. Wood pigeons coo the grass.

A falcon scream creates a stream that’s worth
a trip, the other birds think, and they pass
my window in review in ones and twos.

Their songs connect canal and stream to lakes
where herons intone fish and note which choose
to dive or be the breakfast they will take.

I, also recreated by bird song,
salute the flocks and, singing, fly along.