Counting
Are there 90 million birds in Essex?
He sets up a folding chair
on the high street and starts to count.
After an hour or so the sun has risen enough
to become somewhat annoying
so he repositions the chair
but as he looks down he notices
the shadow of wings flitting
across the pavement;
he realizes he’s missed some.
I guess we’ll never know, he thinks,
and goes for a cuppa instead.
/ / /
16 April 2023
Charlottesville VA
Category: Birds
every good pub
is in your town
cardinal in the bushes
/ / /
7 March 2023
State College PA
Regular Bird
I saw a Regular Bird today.
It was in a bush outside the grocery store.
It was doing Regular Bird things.
A bit of hopping. A flit. The odd chirp.
I took a photo but it just looks like
a Regular Bird, which makes sense I guess.
Then when I got home I noticed
my entire neighborhood had vanished.
/ / /
2 March 2023
State College PA
Jean-Jacques And The Finch
He walks five miles through suburbs and parking lots,
sending photos of English ivy back to its home ground.
He stops to look at birds because that’s what she’d do,
and that’s what he’d do, too, which is why he’s telling her.
The pods of the catalpa dangle like alien fingers
as he stoops below them to angle the camera just so.
On other nights she’s sent ghostly images of blackened forests;
captured the orange glow above rows of identical roofs.
He’s listening to Allen Ginsberg, she’s reading Rousseau.
He wishes he’d brought some water, but he hadn’t planned
to take this walk; continued in response to her delight at the photos.
A turkey vulture glides above his head. He raises one hand
to shield his eyes, captures the image with his thumb.
Rousseau to Voltaire: “I hate you … But I hate you as a man
better fitted to love you, had you so willed.”
There’s a purple finch on the wire under the water tower,
balanced in that way birds can and humans aspire to.
He imagines the feeling of falling, or feels it, truly –
his chest tightening at the thought.
When he looks again the finch is gone.
/ / /
20 February 2023
State College PA
flapping cormorant
“the wind is blowing a gale”
not my afternoon
/ / /
30 January 2023
State College PA
the reflection of a hawk
in the window
of the car ahead of me
/ / /
26 October 2022
State College PA
clashing nature
a northern cardinal leaps
from a red-leafed maple
/ / /
25 October 2022
State College PA
trying to shoot a video
of the damned hawks
don’t they know I’m on TikTok?
/ / /
5 October 2022
State College PA
I told a friend our breakup story
it’s all still fresh on my skin
two hawks watch from the tower
/ / /
3 October 2022
State College PA
raptor on the radio tower
pickin’ up signals
shrieks as I approach
/ / /
27 September 2022
State College PA
raven on the lamppost
vans lined up beneath
testing the wind’s direction
/ / /
13 September 2022
State College PA
an eagle drops like a rock into the river
rises with a fish in its talons
I crane my neck, steer around the curve
/ / /
19 August 2022
just outside Bethel VT
on a whaling voyage
under an oak’s shade
suddenly: a finch!
/ / /
4 August 2022
State College PA