The Birds

Word of the day: “hleów-feðer” – lit. “shelter-feather” (Anglo-Saxon); a comforting or protective arm placed around someone or something. (Robert Macfarlane, posted on Instagram, November 10, 2017) The cardinals’ nest…

A tiny song sparrow lights on the feeder. It peeps as it eats. Casts its little bead-black eyes up and around incessantly, scanning for hawks, falcons, danger. The chickens in…

There are roughly eighteen thousand bird species in the world. Many of these birds fly and others waddle and a few hum and some swim. And all of these birds…

  * * *   Song of the Vultures Let’s give praise to the creatures that have lived here aaaaaaaaAll a broken clay aaaaaaaleft muddied in the stomach aaaaaThe heartbeat…

Birding You were everyone’s mama robin, cracking a warm egg over the fledglings in the neighborhood. I could not move without brushing against the wings of your adopted flock, even…

I bow to you, heron. I bow to stepping out of fear. I bow to patience and focus. I bow to stepping into my power. I bow to risk and…

pelican, dreaming Shee-it! The pelican’s been reading Yeats again, getting into that gyre thing. Riding thermals in the sky, spiraling wider & higher, spread wings not beating, dreaming it’s a…

On an otherwise typical evening, while settling into bed, Suzy felt a sudden urge to say goodnight to her husband. Quickly, before her resolve could fail her, she swapped her…

She is standing. There used to be a bench here, a place to sit and contemplate. Declared a superfund site, this park has been closed for over a decade. Its…

  Pilgrim Hawk The library ripples as if dispossessed when it sees the peregrine weltering over the city, sparking hammer on a gray anvil sky: Won’t you come down quicker…

These poems are excerpts from the author’s book project Buena Vista. Told through a collection of flash fiction, short plays, lists, letters and essays, Buena Vista loosely chronicles the author’s journeys…

* * * When I Was a Bird I had the smallest bones I could breaststroke on the smooth back of evening I had no particular anger Sometimes I made…

* * * One Santa Clara summer day, in my apartment, the stone cat stared at a plastic rose against a sky so white the window seemed to fog. And…

— For Sam     Draemon Sleep Out Loud Not twins   Exhaustion & Sleep Come birds — land on my arm — and show me the rest of flight  …