Category Archives: birds

The Birds of Passage

birds, poetry, , ,

THE BIRDS OF PASSAGE

You are the one who made us
You silver all the minnows in all rivers
You wait in the deep woods
To find the newborn fox cubs
And unseal their eyes
You shower the sky with stars

You walk alone
In the wild royal darkness
Of the heavens above the heavens
Where no one else can go.

When the fragile swallows assemble
For their pilgrimages
When the hummingbirds
Who are scarcely more
Than a glittering breath
Set out for the rain forest
To drink from the scarlet flowers
On the other side of the world
With only now and then
The mast of a passing ship
For a resting place and an inn

When the Canada geese
Are coming down from the north
When the storks of Europe
Stretch out their necks toward Egypt
From their nests on the chimney tops
When shaking their big wings open
And trailing their long legs after them
They rise up heavily
To begin their autumn flight

You who speak without words
To your creatures who live without words
Are hiding under their feathers

To give them a delicate certainty
On the long dangerous night journey.

-Anne Porter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo is from the Chirp for Birds website.

For love of earthly life.

beauty, birds, poetry,

AT COMMON DAWN

At common dawn there is a voice of bird
So sweet, ’tis kin to pain,
For love of earthly life it needs be heard,
And lets not sleep again.

This bird I did one time at midnight hear
In wet November wood
Say to himself his lyric faint and clear
As one at daybreak should.

He ceased; the covert breathed no other sound,
Nor moody answer made;
But all the world at beauty’s worship found,
Was waking in the glade.

-Vivian Locke Ellis

by Jan Schmuckal

Eat a picnic, kick a puffball.

birds, family, mountains, trees, , , , , , ,

We all drove to the closest Giant Sequoia Redwood grove for a picnic among those mighty trees.

Bigelow’s Sneezeweed

On the way, I showed the family the place where my favorite patch of Sneezeweed can always be found, though I’m rarely able to see them at the peak of bloom as they are right now.

In the redwood grove as well, more flowers were in bloom midsummer than in September when I often come.

Western Azalea

Most, like the wintergreen and Violet Draperia, were past their prime, but I was still excited to encounter the plants at this stage when they are saying in color, “Look here!”

Violet Draperia

If I would ever make it up in June, I might see the dogwoods when they are beginning to bloom —

Pacific Dogwood

Though most of their petals are browned and fallen, the graceful lines of trunk and limbs are as elegant as ever. The gooseberry and currant bushes are loaded but the berries are not ready to eat.

Rigo patiently counted 242 tree rings:

Back at the cabin, we like to throw seeds off the deck for the chipmunks and Golden Mantled Ground Squirrels. Then the boys spent time looking under currant bushes for the critters’ hole. Raj came across a puffball under the deck, and never having seen one before, instinctively thought it was some kind of strange ball, and kicked it.

From the deck above, I heard his surprised voice saying, “Something’s wrong… there’s a problem — Grandma, please come down here!”

When I saw what had happened I explained to him about how it works with this kind of fungus; we arranged the unripe pieces to show that it’s a Sculpted Puffball.

Rigo thought that one of his Pokémon cards had blown off the deck, so while Kate and I were hunting around for that, and I was keeping an eye open for more puffballs, suddenly a bird flew up at my feet and revealed this nest in the grass:

As I’m writing the story next morning, I went out to look down at the nest; I had pushed a couple of sticks in the ground on either side to keep us from stepping on it. It looks like the mother bird is still sitting on her clutch of pretty eggs. [Update: I think they might be the eggs of a Dark-Eyed Junco.]

Breaking news: A few hours later, a baby bird has hatched!

Our astonishment collects in chill air.

birds, poetry, winter,

PRAISE THEM

The birds don’t alter space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We’re the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn’t hear
what singing completes us?

-Li-Young Lee