Earlier in the week Sherry Marr quoted Mary Oliver: "A poem should always have birds in it." She went on to say that finding birds in a poem made her happy.
So here is a poem for Sherry Marr.
Because the cardinals own the privet hedge,
the wrens own the back porch, and hummingbirds
own where the jewelweed blooms, long as it does
(and it is blooming now), I seldom see
the rest of the Cat Sanctuary's birds:
the little drab ones camouflaged in trees,
beyond the reach of astigmatic eyes
because they seldom perch for long enough
to aim binoculars if I've brought them.
I seldom do. I've never paid that much
attention. But they're threatened by incursions
of English sparrows and pigeons, in the towns.
The worst thing one can do is put out feeders
and birdhouses that the English sparrows claim.
The best is leave them in the tops of trees
untouched, left to grow back to oak and beech
for future generations to enjoy.
Meanwhile song sparrows, Carolina wrens,
nuthatch and chickadee and Tufted Titmouse,
most years an oriole, a water-thrush
some years, and then of course the mockingbirds
who mock those who try to know birds by sound,
flit through the woods still hardening back from years
when farmers clear-cut to the tops of hills
and watched the hilltops shrink beneath their cuts.
Where trees are cut and soil's left to grow
in grass, the robins and killdeer move in.
Bluebirds were common once; now they are rare
though loved. All birds are predators. The big
ones, crows and hawks and owls, will let
you watch them if you choose. They knew
when people used to shoot them. Now they know
that people want their species to come back.
The great blue heron, rare when I was young,
is now almost a pest. They kill the trees
where they roost; five or ten years all a tree
can stand of herons' sociability.
We used to think they lived alone. They fish
alone. They roost, when they have fished enough,
in great big happy families, noise and smell
louder than cormorants'. They will share a tree
with cormorants, lesser herons, pelicans
at a good healthy distance if the tree
is big enough. The fertilizer burn's
what kills the tree. Next day the herons fish
alone again; the cormorants stand in rows;
the pelican, presumably, tried to think
how it could get back south where it belonged,
while it lived on the river. People of
good will always enjoy the birds, here, though
fanatical birdwatchers congregate
back east, along the flyway. Birds are nice
to know, especially in mosquito season.
(All photos are fair use from Google. All bird species shown coexist peacefully with cats, though some die after every "pesticide" spray poisoning incident. All normally coexist peacefully with humans, too, though orioles sometimes claim a fruit tree as theirs and fly around, crying "Sweet! sweet!", while humans pick the sweet fruit and laugh at the birds for saying something so obvious. Generally, the smaller a bird is, the higher the proportion of mosquitoes is likely to be in its diet.)
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