Today's poem is by John Smith
Birder's Last Blessing
Leave the binoculars behind.
What good has bringing birds closer
brought them, anyway?Let species spring
unidentified branch
to branchand catapult
into the scrambled alphabet
of clouds.Let wings alone
be sufficient, a glint of indigo,
dusk's fluted callingspiraling to earth
like a handful of leaves,
the feathered thing before you.May the names of all thirty-six warblers
if you ever had them
be the first to go.May nothing fly from
the field guide of your mind
when iridescent emerald zippingzips by a Kool-Aid-red feeder
hooked like bait
on the neighbor's gutter.May you hover sipping nectar
from scarlet trumpets mid-flight
in nobody's garden.
Tweet
Copyright © 2014 John Smith All rights reserved
from Even That Indigo
Hip Pocket Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
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