Tag: bird

Ode to the Indigo Bunting by Julene Waffle

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Ode to the Indigo Bunting

You are not blue, not really—
but a trick of feathered lattice,
microscopic barbs bending light
into indigo illusion.
A prism perched on my wire fence,
you split the ordinary
into astonishment.

Summer is your longitude,
your body the compass
that inhales starlight,
exhales migration.
You read the Milky Way
like scripture,
winging south on constellations.

What is indigo, if not
the syllables between violet and night,
a threshold color,
ink before it dries,
a pigment of prayer?
You wear it as vestige,
a psalm sewn into a bruise,
your song a bright cipher
against the grain of dawn.

Fragment of sky, flame of my hedgerows,
what sermon do you sing—
that beauty is only refraction?
That even bones can carry
the language of galaxies?
That wonder arrives
winged and weightless,
dressed in an arc of color
that is not color at all?

*

Julene Waffle, graduate of Hartwick College and Binghamton University, is a teacher, family-woman, boy-mom, pet-mom, nature-lover, and life-liver. She enjoys pretending like she has it all together. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal Blog, The English Journal, Mslexia, The Ekphrastic Review, among other journals and anthologies, as well as her chapbook So I Will Remember (2020). Learn more at www.wafflepoetry.com, X: @JuleneWaffle, and Instagram: julenewaffle

Four Poems by Al Ortolani

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Eagles on Live Cam

My wife is watching an eagle camera
set above an Ozark aerie. The eaglets
are pecking escape from their shells.
They are ponderously slow, but my wife
watches the breaking
as if she can help the young crack free.
It’s the mother in her, identifying
with the helpless, as if enabling
them to emerge as downy tufts, hatchlings
in a decades old nest of driftwood weave,
two puffs of hunger in light snow.
An empty nest to her is the echo
in the kitchen, chairs shoved in,
children flown from the breakfast table.

*

Bird Feeders in the Next Life

Only the squirrels visit the handfuls
of birdseed I’ve broadcast across
the top of the snow. I break down

an Amazon box and smooth it flat
under the dogwood tree, one of the few
spots where the snow is shallow.

I pour a small mountain of seed
at the tip of the Amazon arrow. Only
the dog visits, sniffs the cardboard,

the scent of sunflower. For Christmas
my wife gave me a smart feeder, one
that when put together correctly and linked

to the internet, keeps surveillance on
the birds. Currently, it’s still in its box
and pushed under my desk. Buddhists

say that we continue to return to the world
like cicadas, until the suffering of all
sentient beings has been sung to its end.

I have time to link up the new feeder,
before it’s too late. The snow
turning to ice, the entire lawn concrete

to birds, their small chisel beaks
as hapless as best intentions. I have
become a hero to squirrels. They
dedicate their largest acorn to me.

*

Oyster Dressing

Boxes and ribbons still litter the living room
although we have scooted them into piles,
some for saving, some for the dumpster.

Now that Christmas is over and the family
has returned to their homes across the city
I retreat to my little office at the back of the house,

the dog curled on the one-man bed snoring.
It’s a quiet morning, except for the neighbor
trying out his new leaf blower. We could

have opened a bottle of red wine in front
of the fireplace, talked about the children
and the grandchildren they in turn are raising.

We might have wondered about our parents
and grandparents, the oyster dressing, the apple pies.
The recipes we thought we’d remember.

My wife opens the bifold doors to dump
a load of laundry into the washer. It is
the sound we share when moving on.

*

Harley Davidson

Even after his death, my father needed
to visit his children. It was a given
that he’d show up at unexpected moments

as a cardinal at the window, pecking on the glass,
moving around the house from pane to pane
or filling the backyard tree in a hooded red flock.

We’d come to expect him, to relish whatever
message he presumed to send. My niece dreamed
he rode a motorcycle, a Harley Davidson
into her sleep, which was odd, and humorous

since he’d been a fan of knock-off Vespas,
the cheaper the better. To comfort her grandmother,
she told the story of the dream, the scooter

turned muscle bike. Her grandmother paled,
and handed over a Harley Davidson key she’d found
in Dad’s coat pocket. There were explanations,

but no secret Harley tucked away under tarps
in the garage. My niece kept her story private,
the key in her jewelry box. Years later,

Dad rode again into her brother’s dream
on the same motorcycle after his dog passed,
the dog on his grandfather’s lap, tail wagging,

tongue lolling like it did for treats. My nephew,
an emergency room doctor, a man of heart monitors,
the science of code blue defibrillator paddles.

*

Al Ortolani is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and George Bilgere’s Poetry Town. He was the recipient of the Bill Hickok Humor Award from I-70 Review. Currently, he’s a contributing poetry editor to the Chiron Review.

I haven’t heard a bird in months by Sherry Abaldo

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I haven’t heard a bird in months

and I wonder if I’m going crazy or
all this really is a simulation or
World War III already started
like my slumming source of news says

or if this is just the desert way, things
busy eating other things, napping with
their exorcist heads backwards, hunting
shade or water beyond human footfalls

I heard a screech at dawn last week
that sounded like a murder in the live oak
trees, or maybe mating – grackles? feral
cats? elephant tranquilizer OD?

finally on a walk I spot a hummingbird,
slim beak deep in the neighbor’s red
lantana, her body greenly iridescent, all
suburban Vegas flash, a fish with wings

*

Sherry Abaldo currently lives with her husband in Las Vegas. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, ONE ART, Rattle, The Eunoia Review, and many other outlets. Her poems are forthcoming in Sequestrum and The Mackinaw. More at www.sherryabaldo.com.

The Bird in Concourse A by Caitlin O’Halloran

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The Bird in Concourse A

The bird in Concourse A has been here so long,
it scarcely remembers the outside world.
A security guard tried many times
to capture it with a net,
but every time it flew away,
seemingly happy with the lot it was given.

Here, it lives among weary travelers
who drag their suitcases behind them,
carry neck pillows purchased at newsstands,
and sit by the gate for flights that are always delayed.

It likes to drink from the dregs
of a McDonald’s soda machine,
bathe in the drinking fountains,
and watch the conveyor belt
where baggage spills onto a silver riverbed,
like water cascading over rocks.

*

Caitlin O’Halloran is a biracial Filipino-American writer living in Rochester, New York. Her poetry has been published in literary magazines, including Third Wednesday, Vast Chasm Magazine, The Basilisk Tree, Apricity Magazine, and Remington Review. caitlinohalloran.com

Two Poems by Judith Sornberger

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What Is Essential

I fell for him even before he called me
his flower the first time we made love.
But how little we knew of each other
when we married at eighteen. Not long after,
I learned he didn’t believe in squandering
our earnings—mine from the accounting
job I hated, his from the mattress factory—
on anything inessential.

Our second February, someone at work
was selling five-dollar daffodil
bouquets for the Heart Association.
Without asking his permission, I bought one,
and all the way home I hardly noticed
the black slush I trudged through
for the brightness I carried. Sprinting
up the steps to our tiny apartment,
I hoped the tight buds, as they opened,
might melt what had frozen between us
that ice-bound winter. Silly, I suppose,
as splurging on something so unnecessary.

The next morning, we awoke to a wide swathe
of sunlight spread across the kitchen table
and one brave bud splayed open. Given his
disapproval, my husband refused to see
how the frilly gold center resembled
a gramophone speaker—the kind of contraption
I imagined always playing love songs.
All day, into the elegiac light of late afternoon,
it broadcasted the scent of an awakening,
the blaring silence of an ending.

*

The Return of the Upside-down Bird

I lay myself out on the chaise longue,
inviting sunshine to ease my shoulders.
My treat this first warm day is reading outside,
but the pain in my crumbling right knee
Shrieks so loudly I can’t concentrate.
Deep sigh. Close your eyes.

When we first moved here, I loved how the woods
kept creeping ever closer to the deck. Pines, juniper,
and honeysuckle still approach, but the ashes
are a dead and dying tribe, stumbling down,
one by one, like so many I’ve loved.

Any day one may crash through the roof.
But damn, I didn’t come out here to muse
on one more thing falling apart. Opening again,
my eyes flit to the petite red-breasted nuthatch
I’ve watched for all winter among the birds
braving the hawk’s keen eye to partake
at my feeder. The one my long-dead love
called the upside-down bird.

Who knows how it survived the winter?
But here it is, spiraling, head first,
down the dead trunk, pecking at insects
in the shredding bark. And in the next second—
I can hardly believe it—another appears
on the trunk next door. Maybe its mate?
Maybe they’re grateful for the death
that so abundantly feeds them. Maybe
they’ll weave a nest from its peeling strands,
lay a handful of hope for the rest of us.

*

Judith Sornberger’s most recent poetry collection is The Book of Muses (Finishing Line Press). Her full-length poetry collections are I Call to You from Time (Wipf & Stock), Angel Chimes: Poems of Advent and Christmas (Shanti Arts), Practicing the World (Shanti Arts), and Open Heart (Calyx Books). She is also the author of five other chapbooks, including the award-winning Wal-Mart Orchid. Sornberger is professor emerita of Mansfield University of Pennsylvania where she taught English and, many years ago, created the Women’s Studies Program. She is involved in community theater in Wellsboro, PA—producing, writing, and acting regularly in productions. Living on the side of a mountain in the northernmost tier of the Appalachians is a constant source of inspiration for her. www.judithsornberger.net

Bird by Emily Lake Hansen

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Bird

What does the name for it matter?
It was just a bird, a giant bird,
suddenly landing on the white sand
and then, as if its occasion were both
remarkable and unremarkable,
it paraded alongside the waves,
a small fish in its beak, dinner
and prize. If you’re going
to photograph me, it lifted its knee
like a rockette, at least get my good
side. Though what side of something
so graceful, so momentary could be
bad? I stood with the crowd,
beachgoers with camera phones
and to-go margaritas. We each
wanted to capture it – the delicacy
of feathers, the brevity of joy, earth
before its collapse. What if
I never see this bird again?
So we name it: heron
its supermodel neck, its body
framed on stilts, and yet
capable of flight, of leaving,
and, if we’re lucky, of coming back.

*

Emily Lake Hansen (she/her) is the author of Home and Other Duty Stations (Kelsay Books) and the chapbook The Way the Body Had to Travel (dancing girl press). Her poetry has appeared in 32 Poems, Hobart, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Atticus Review, and the Shore among others. The recipient of the 2022 Longleaf Poetry Fellowship, she lives in Atlanta where she is a PhD student at Georgia State University and an instructor of English at Agnes Scott College.

Three Poems by Lorelei Bacht

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Orb Weaver

As the wife, I have developed
A bad reputation,

Although in truth my nature is
Industrious and meek,

My nights and days tenderly spent
In domestic labor:

Caring for the two little ones,
A fragile construction

Of time, milk bottles, fortitude,
And imagination;

Imagining that he loves me
And will return from work

Inspired and obligated
By the cloud-thin netting

Of quiet, resigned affection
I have woven for him.

My fragile work holds us in place:
It is our home address.

And when he tears it carelessly,
With the back of the hand,

I consume the tangle of silk,
And set to work again.

*

White Bird

No-one remembers
To feed the bird in its cage,
A brush stroke of white

Watching turtle doves
Arrive and depart at ease –
No tether, no bars.

In a small mirror:
A reflection, companion
Unattainable.

Desires the size
Of horizons limited:
To the perch and back.

When we procured it,
You promised regular care,
Like a six-year-old,

Then quickly forgot,
Looking for more exotic –
White bird left behind.

I took up the job
Of feeding your abandoned
Every now and then.

To your wife the chores,
To you the purposeless thrill
Of the chase, the chase.

*

The Homecoming

Two springs after we left the house,
The turtle dove returned –

Morning song: a gentle flutter
Of blue-grey in the pines.

It came back when we stopped wishing
It back – as if it knew

That wanting can never equate
Having, and only flew

Back into the abandoned yard
Long after grass had gone

To seeds, relishing the silence,
The freedom only found

In hopeless, overgrown spaces.
(Hope really is a cage.)

And when I thought I’d lost it all,
He loved me once again.

*

Lorelei Bacht (she/they) is a person, a poet, queer, multi-, living in Asia. When she is not drawing sad little sketches, she writes – too much. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Abridged, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, The Inflectionist Review, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter @bachtlorelei

Treescape by Amy Barone

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Treescape

A peephole to the world outside
reveals shades of green,
brilliant budding leaves.

The collage of trees shines
on a pink Japanese maple
as big crows probe a patch of dirt.

Mockingbirds aren’t chirping;
they’re belting out arias—so much to say
after their winter isolation.

I invited the morning shower
to wash away the cold,
help a heartier spring take root.

Rain made it easier to stay inside
and while away another Sunday.

*

Amy Barone’s latest poetry collection, We Became Summer, from New York Quarterly Books, was released in 2018. She wrote chapbooks Kamikaze Dance (Finishing Line Press) and Views from the Driveway (Foothills Publishing.) Barone belongs to the Poetry Society of America and the brevitas online poetry community. She lives in NYC.