Black Hills Audubon Society

Ornithology 101

Now that you have staked their skeletons,
eyed the scope of digit number four, prodded
strutted, white ribs, pinched
a wishbone for resilience, thumbed
a keeled sternum's edge still trying
to steer scattered feathers, stroked
a hummingbird's mum iridescence, ruffed
the white down of a great egret
slit and stuffed as last year's final project,
sprinted with a severed wing to catch
the physics, given new vision
to a blackbird with two dabs of cotton,
you can leave with an A in class Aves.
Now that you have looked through birds, you see
the diagrammatic movements of geese
across the blue sky, dotted lines
narrowing a million years. You expect
from every American goldfinch thistles
and sadness, and when you walk out
among the world's perches and Latinate streaks
at the edge of sight, the air is feathers
measuring the bones of your face.

by Derek Sheffield

This poem of Derek Sheffield's won the 2003 James Hearst Poetry Award judged by Li-Young Lee and was first published in the North American Review. In that same year, he was a finalist for the St. Louis Poetry Center Award judged by James Tate, the Pablo Neruda Award hosted by Nimrod, and the Elinor Benedict Poetry Award hosted by Passages North. His work has also appeared in Puerto del Sol, Poetry Northwest, Crab Creek Review, Salt River Review, Clackamas Literary Review, and Poet Lore. Blue Begonia Press published his chapbook, A Mouthpiece of Thumbs, and The Seattle Review has recently published his interviews of Ivan Doig and William Stafford's family. One of the classes he teaches at Wenatchee Valley College is interdisciplinary and combines ornithology, field ecology, and essay writing. He teaches this class with noted ornithologist Dr. Dan Stephens.

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