Around the Neighborhood, On the Wing

City birds, everywhere -- in the trees, on the sidewalks, in the poems.

Hey look, I decorated! Photo is by Zac Ong on Unsplash

Urban birders can point out all sorts of species in the greenways and parks, and even I (not a birder) can’t miss the hawk who perches now and then on the roof-ledge of the building I see from my kitchen window. Most in evidence, though, are the usual suspects … who still manage to weird me out sometimes, and weirded-out is enough sometimes to get a poem started.

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Street Crows

When did they become city birds?
When did they leave the cornfields
of Nebraska, of Van Gogh,
and come flapping west?

     Naw.
     Raw.

In ones and threes
they slice through morning fog,
blunt obsidian axe-blades balanced teetering
on billboards, gables, bus shelters, curbs.

     Jaw.
     Draw.

Gulls and pigeons glance over just enough
to keep a safety zone intact -- crows stare,
ancient alien eyes as sharp
as their grinning beaks.

     Baw.
     Law.

Sparrows and blackbirds call to each other --
crows hail us too, and comment, in tones
of gleeful irony, like fashion critics
or prophets of apocalypse.

     Faw.
     Pshaw.

All city birds want our food -- crows want
to eat the space between us, jab
the seed-corn of our city lives from hearts
and sidewalks, and flap away glutted.

     Maw.
     Claw.

     Craw.

---

Pigeons in Flight

Waiting to cross where the boulevard is widest
at the top of the hill, I almost miss my light
while I stare like a tourist at the roof of a building
across the street, ledge lined with pigeons,
where, for no reason humans can see, a handful of birds
have sprung into the air, flying in a loop
over roof, over street, back, dipping toward the ledge
but not landing, and each time they dip
more pigeons leap up to join them, around, back, down,
a Möbius strip of silent gray-white motion, widening
the path of their flight so far, I start to think
they will break off and fly away, fly somewhere,
but always dipping down and back, until after 
the right number (what number, who counts it?)
of arcing loops, they start to settle,
a few at a time as they rose up, rejoining
the birds who never moved at all, coiling back
that twirled lariat of an air-show, that group flight
to nowhere, that exercise, against a winter-blue sky,
of wing and nature and ritual, of a mystery
that humans never grasp, and pigeons do.

---

Honestly? Crows weird me out whenever I see them. And before anybody starts birdsplaining how smart and social and adaptive corvidae are: I believe it. I’ve seen the nature shows. And, come on. They’re so big. And shiny. And satirical. And The Stand was the first Stephen King book I ever read, after which it’s hard to see crows in any benevolent light. To me, they’re particularly odd and startling when I see them in the city. In an urban setting they look like forerunners of an alien invasion, so confident of their coming supremacy that they can’t be bothered to disguise themselves. That unease (mine, not theirs) is what the poem wants to express, and it also attempts to mimic some of the crows’ own gleeful, ironic remarks. This one is fun to read aloud, if you’re in the mood for vocal dramatics.

Pigeons, on the other hand? Hardly ever weirded out by pigeons; they’ve been part of the urban landscape since ever. A half-conscious greeting when we pass on the sidewalk, mild irritation when they make a mess or block my path, mild amusement over the males all ruffled up to go courting … that’s the most I feel about pigeons, until the moment when I’m gobsmacked by the collective artistry of birds that seem, individually, to be fairly prosaic and not all that bright. A group flight like that — what is it for? And what kind of question is that for a poet to ask? What a poem is for, in this case, is to try to put words and cadence to the swoop and circle of that flight — which, incidentally, makes this another poem that’s fun to read aloud.

So, what have we learned from this walk around the neighborhood? That creatures with wings should be kept an eye on. And that poems grow their own wings when you read them aloud as you write them, so that by the time you’re finished they’re ready to fly.