Poetry

I do not know the names of birds as I should, as my ancestors no doubt did trudging under them as they trekked Carolina to Tennessee on to Arkansas, shadows of wings flitting over their heads.

Oh, I know the garish he-cardinal, the bully bluebird, robin with spring’s worm bright in its beak, quarrelsome grackles and starlings hording in fragile branches of sycamores.

But these five flyers bouncing from powerline to fence to still-leafless maple— fighting or flirting, I can’t say— their sudden dance on a sunny, dismal day seems otherworldly, spirits from some old story told around a campfire circled by humble wagons of my ancestors, who knew the names of birds.

- Don Stinson