Dec 20, 2015
As a child running loose, I said it this way: Bird. Bird, a startled sound at field’s edge. the sound my mouth makes, pushing away the cold. So, at the end of this quiet afternoon, wanting to write the love poems I’ve never written, I turn from the shadow in the cottonwood and say blackbird, as if to you. There is the blackbird. Black bird, until its darkness is the darkness of a woman’s hair falling across my uptunred face. And I go on speaking into the night. The oriole, the flicker, the gold finch.
Peter Everwine, from “Learning to Speak,” Collecting the Animals (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2000)
