Over the years, I’ve written a lot of poems and bits of fiction about birds; crows mostly, also gulls, hawks, pelicans. Owls are said to be the familiars of the poet. One fall/winter in the mid 1990s, I had a pair of them nesting in a tree outside my house. If if was a good omen, as they say it is, I can’t say of what. There was no watershed of fortune, inspiration, or even good digestion the attribution of which to those hooty little beasts would not amount to logical fallacy. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Below is one of my favorite poems about birds. I wrote it in Delano back in the late 1990s, sitting in the cold Valley autumn air, and thinking about a girl. She’s long decamped, and the poem has probably been posted here before. So if you’re looking for something a little fresher, and maybe better, here’s a link to somebody else:

A Meeting Of The Birds by John Kinsella. Read it aloud; his language is crisp and tactile, and much to be admired.

THE CROWS

Having breakfast with Papa
as the morning slowly warms
from freezing, thinking of animals.
The coyote cultivates his heart
to sadness, moves alone for food,
dies on the road.

Out in the almond orchards and grapes
from electric wires and trees
a flock of crows is lifted up.
By noon I’ve seen a few
perched in the old mulberry
cut back for winter.

The crows speak of my unspeakable
solitude, and though I struggle
and pray against such thoughts,
I think of your body: your throat,
breasts, delicate hands.

Your hands. I know that a man
must die of such thoughts, or
die of how distant you are.
Like the distance
from this quiet house in a flat town
to the silent encircling hills,
with clouds pretending to be snow.

(c) by J. Kyle Kimberlin
all rights reserved