Bird you see it, Bird you don't

Two poems about, well, guess what.

Almost surely not a whippoorwill. Just a bird at twilight doing his best. Photo by Michel Catalisano on Unsplash

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One of these poems is a fantasia about a bird I’ve never seen, based on a sentence from an old book that captivated my imagination. The other poem describes something I watched as it happened and have been thinking about ever since, as if it were an augury of … well, you tell me.

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THE VANISHING WHIPPOORWILL                               2024

[Title and italicized lines are taken from a passage in “The Strangest Things in the World,” published in 1958 by science journalist Thomas R. Henry. During April 2024 NaPoWriMo.net invited poets to look for writing prompts in this quirky compendium, as part of their “30 poems in 30 days” challenge.] 


Sit out some twilight, late
or early, listen as it vanishes
into the life it loves, a life
in night, in dapple, life as near
to achieving invisibility
as any living creature — not 
from fear, or why nest careless
on shaded ground, why if wary
chant and chant the dusk away
then dawn back to the sky,
the same quick sad cadenza, joy
in a minor key, a dozen
and a dozen times again? 
Love and enchantment dapple
its life, its vanishing, no fear 
of humankind; whatever we
may alter or destroy, it knows,
at last, we cannot steal the night.

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ATTACK                                                  2025


The American flag
is under attack
by a crow who circles
the flagpole up there
on the firehouse roof.

Again and again
he hover-flaps, snatching
with talons and beak
at the wind-whipped seams
of the flag, at the clip
where it clings to the halyard.

Again and again
talons skid as he lights
on the gray steel globe
at the top of the pole.
Again and again he caws,
first Look, then Danger,
his loud voice small
in the whipping wind
and steel-gray sky.

Then he attacks
again, frantic to tear
this flapping thing out of
the air, frantic to stay
aloft himself, to attack
and keep from falling.

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