Four Birds

Bird I
Numenius phaeopus

The curlew pits my veins
with his footprints,
strolling through the chambers
of my heart like a sightseer
in a cathedral, picks
clots of doubt from the walls
with whimbrel grace, writes
nothing, breeds from Arctic
coasts south to Yukon Delta.

Bird II
Pica Pica

A nasal querulous maag? cry
while in hooping flight
like mortar shells, knowing
death is holy and good to eat,
links homo lupus to Magpie,
toe back, apposed thumb
— pollex or passerine
intelligence the same,
we live and speak together
at the side of the road,
our young also greenish, blotched,
   though magpies
     do not make war.

Bird III
Megaceryle alcyon

The Kingfisher rattles his bones
like pistons and gears, but he is
as shy as a titmouse and dies
if you shit in his waters.
Saw one way up the Palouse
five years ago, none since.
The waters warmer, browner.

Bird IV
Synthliboramphus antiquum

Low calls in the colony at night,
the Ancient Murrelet survives
at sea, the Pribilofs, Baja.
Stays in the open, away from
men, memorizing the old songs,
standing on the edge
of a thousand foot cliff
from which he tumbles in delight
at an image.

 
by Howard McCord

Howard McCord is the author of more than twenty-five volumes of poetry, short fiction, and essays, including The Great Toad Hunt and Other Expeditions (Crossing Press), The Wisdom of Silenus: Collected Essays (St. Andrews College Press), The Old Beast (Copper Canyon), and, with Walter Lowenfels, The Life of Fraenkel's Death (Washington State U. Press). Since 1971 he has taught at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, first as director of the Creative Writing Program, later as director of the Ph.D.--Creative Emphasis degree program. Among his many honors are two NEA fellowships, the 1990 Ohioana Award for poetry, the Golden Nugget Award (UT at El Paso), the Hart Crane Award, a National Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and a Fulbright fellowship. The Man Who Walked to The Moon is his first novel. © 1998 Howard McCord