Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘birds’

Augury

Posted in ecology, Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 17, 2024| 9 Comments »

“Black Vulture” – Clayton Joe Young – http://www.joeyoungphoto.com

 . 
[poems by Scott Owens, photos by Clayton Joe Young]
 . 
Buzzard
 . 
Always
when you look up
at white clouds, blue sky,
 . 
you see
that hyphen of a bird,
not flying but floating,
 . 
silently
keeping two worlds
you imagine apart, together,
 . 
connecting
earth to sky,
life to death.
 . 
Closer,
we see the hunched neck,
bald head, vulture stoop
 . 
as something that gives us
chills.
 . 
Scott Owens
from An Augury of Birds, forthcoming from Redhawk Publications; poems by Scott Owens, photography by Clayton Joe Young
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
The naturalist Robert Lynd is quoted as saying, “In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence.” How often do we actually pause and participate in silence? Become part of it? Sunday afternoon Linda and I had hiked a couple of miles along the Mountains-to-Sea Trail when we came face to face with friends we hadn’t seen since before COVID. They were hiking in from the opposite direction but our destination was the same: the Forest Bathing trail along Grassy Creek.
 . 
We continued on together. We outpaced noisier hikers; they turned back and left us in solitude. The thrum of voices at the winery and of pickups on Route 21 receded. We stopped – a gentle murmur of water flowing over the new beaver dam. Stopped again – breezes swishing through fresh Joe Pye Weed along the creek. As the trail led us up and away from the water, we left the laurel and holly and entered a glade of slender young tuliptree still recovering from logging. Our friend stopped us once more. She had taken off her sandals to feel the earth. Late afternoon sunlight streamed slant among the saplings and we were part of the silence. A vireo sang. She raised her arms and said, “This is what I came here for.”
 . 
❦
 . 
If we create silence, within us and around us, air and earth will magnify the silence with beauty. Birds will complete the silence with wing whirr and song. Here’s an invitation to silence, offered to us in the poems and photographs of An Augury of Birds. Scott Owens and Clayton Joe Young reward our held breath and contemplative approach with their avian celebration. They make these feathered creatures our companions – individual, distinctive, ripe with purpose. And Augury is such an apt title. Wasn’t Rachel Carson’s prophecy of a silent spring the spark that ignited our current fire of conservation and environmentalism? Noticing birds is a gateway to noticing the universe. Lift the latch, enter these pages, become part of these lives – If you close your eyes / you can hear the cosmos opening.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 

“Northern Mockingbird” – Clayton Joe Young – http://www.joeyoungphoto.com

 . 
All There Is to Say
 . 
If it happens that you find yourself
at the front of a room full of people
listening to all you have to say
about what you think you know
and suddenly you hear
from an open window
you hadn’t even noticed was open
the voice of a mockingbird
as clear as the voice of God
singing in every language at once
you owe it to yourself
and all with the possibility of hearing
to stop in the almost silence
and say out loud, Listen
 . 
Scott Owens
from An Augury of Birds, forthcoming from Redhawk Publications; poems by Scott Owens, photography by Clayton Joe Young
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Hiwassee
 . 
Long fingers of catalpa trees,
Green globes of apples
Hang low over Licklog Road.
 . 
White crowns of Queen Anne’s lace,
Orange umbels of butterfly weed
Fill a field where flycatchers
 . 
Dart from limb to grass
and back, consuming
Whatever rises. Swallows
 . 
Carve endless angles across
The tops of weeds let go.
Brown headed cowbirds
 . 
Follow white-faced cows
Near a lake surrounded
By mountains in a place
 . 
Where everyone waves
And everyone remembers
What it means to live.
 . 
Scott Owens
from An Augury of Birds, forthcoming from Redhawk Publications; poems by Scott Owens, photography by Clayton Joe Young
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
An Augury of Birds will be published by Redhawk Press in 2024. Check HERE for ordering information.
Scott Owens enlarges the community of creativity. He is professor of Poetry at Lenoir Rhyne University, former editor of Wild Goose Poetry Review and Southern Poetry Review, and he owns and operates Taste Full Beans Coffeehouse and Gallery where he coordinates innumerable readings and open mics, including POETRY HICKORY.
Clayton Joe Young is the Director and Senior Professor for the Photographic Technology Program at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, NC. He has won numerous awards for his photography and has published several books, including other collaborations with Scott Owens and with poet Tim Peeler, featuring rural North Carolina, especially Catawba County.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 

“Chickadee” – Clayton Joe Young – http://www.joeyoungphoto.com

 . 
All the Meaningful Noise
 . 
How can you be on this earth
and not close your eyes on occasion
and listen to leaves give voice to wind,
hear the laugh of crow,
annunciation of blue jay,
moan of mourning dove,
all the meaningful noise
of another spring day?
 . 
Behind the finishing plant
just off the run-down road
between failing furniture towns,
a field is bursting with purple flowers.
If you close your eyes
you can hear the cosmos opening.
 . 
Scott Owens
from An Augury of Birds, forthcoming from Redhawk Publications; poems by Scott Owens, photography by Clayton Joe Young
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
2020-06-11a Doughton Park Tree
 . 

Read Full Post »

Joy Harjo’s Birds

Posted in Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »

IMG_0328
 . 
[two poems from An American Sunrise]
 . 
I Wonder What You Are Thinking,
 . 
The feathered wife asked her feathered husband –
 . 
She watches as he cleans his wings, notes how he sends his eyes
+++ over the horizon
To viridian in the flying away direction.
So many migrations stacked within sky memory.
 . 
Her body is stirring with eggs. She tucks found materials
Into their nest with her beak.
The nerves in her wingtips sense rains coming to soften the ground.
To send food to the surface of the earth.
 . 
He says nothing –
As he wonders about the careless debris that humans make
Even as it yields ribbon, floss and string.
 . 
Housecats and their sporting trails are on his mind’s map.
There are too many in this neighborhood.
 . 
A ragged yellow fellow eats birds after hours of play.
He stays out of that tom’s way, and has warned his wife
The same. Though she’s more wisely wary than him.
 . 
Dogs are easy. They bark and leap and wag their tails.
They have no concerns for most flying things.
They lap up human trails for love.
 . 
And why do we keep renewing this ceremony of nests?
Each feathered generation flies away.
What does it mean, and why
the green growing green
turning red against yellow,
then gray, gray and green again?
 . 
When I need her heartbeat
In the freeze winds why is she always there
And not somewhere else?
 . 
Her lilt question has made an echo in his ears
like a string fluttering from a bush
In the delicate spring wind:
 . 
I wonder what you are thinking . . .
 . 
He doesn’t answer.
 . 
Then he does.
 . 
“Nothing.
I was thinking about the nothing of nothing at all.”
 . 
Joy Harjo
from An American Sunrise, W. W. Norton, New York NY, © 2019
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
I wonder what this House Wren outside my kitchen door is thinking. I think I can tell what he is thinking by watching what he is doing and listening to what he is saying, but is what I’m thinking he’s thinking really what he’s thinking?
 . 
Two weeks ago he – and I do mean “he,” no question about male behavior – discovered the new wren house my daughter and her Josh gave us for Christmas. For days he perched on it and blasted us with what he calls song: three razor sharp notes followed by high decibel jumble sounding like everyone’s tripping all over each other. He would sing for a few minutes, then I’d hear him on the other side of the neighbor’s yard, then down in the woods, then back to us. Pretty soon I caught him shoving sticks into the wren-sized hole in the little hanging house, then hopping inside before jutting his head out and singing again.
 . 
House Wren males build two or more “dummy nests” to attract a mate. If the female likes what she sees, she picks him for her chicks’ daddy and picks one site; she finishes off the nest with soft before laying eggs. My personal wren spent at least a week making the circuit of his three nests. Were there no females in this end of Surry County? Did I detect his singing becoming ever more energetic? (“Frantic” and “insistent” would also be good descriptors for that revving engine of a song.) Finally I noticed two wrens hopping branch to branch in the serviceberry tree where the nesting box hangs. Yes! And they’ve stayed, so they must be a pair. (To mere humans male and female House Wrens look absolutely identical, no trace of sexual dimorphism).
 . 
And he still sings. A few times an hour instead of every few minutes. I’m thinking those first songs conveyed him thinking, “This is my big chance. c’mon C’mon C’MON!” Now he’s thinking, “OK, off to a good start, kids to raise, you other wrens listen and weep and KEEP YOUR DISTANCE!” But how do I know? Just because that power-song jumps my heartbeat 20 points doesn’t mean it’s not, for the wren himself, the most laid back Zen-song in the Avian Class. In fact, it’s probably fruitless and a little silly for me to even think I can know what he’s thinking.
 . 
But then there is this: I am grateful for the tiny eggs and I’m positive he and she are as well. Let me sing for you, little House Wren, my song of gratitude.
 . 
❦
 . 
Joy Harjo’s An American Sunrise is a journey, a revelation, a lament, a celebration. I featured three poems last week in THE WAY HOME and pondered what it might take for us to all become family. This week, though, I can’t leave her book without sharing these two poems about birds. They knock me out. I often suspected but now I see it’s true that I share a lot of DNA with birds (well, Family Hominidae and Class Aves are all part of Phylum Vertebrata, so YES we all share plenty of genes). If you, too, want to be a bird when you grow up, send me a comment after you finish reading.
 . 
❦
 . 
An American Sunrise, Joy Harjo; W. W. Norton & Company, New York NY © 2019. Joy Harjo served as Poet Laureate of the United States for three terms, 2019 through 2021.
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
Redbird Love
 . 
We watched her grow up.
She was the urgent chirper,
Fledgling flier.
And when spring rolled
Out its green
She’d grown
Into the most noticeable
Bird-girl.
Long-legged and just
The right amount of blush
Tipping her wings, crest
And tail, and
She knew it
In the bird parade.
We watched her strut.
She owned her stuff.
The males perked their armor, greased their wings,
And flew sky-loop missions
To show off
For her.
In the end
There was only one.
There’s that one you circle back to – for home.
This morning
The young couple scavenge seeds
On the patio.
She is thickening with eggs.
Their minds are busy with sticks the perfect size, tufts of fluff
Like dandelion, and other pieces of soft.
He steps aside for her, so she can eat.
Then we watch him fill his beak
Walk tenderly to her and kiss her with seed.
The sacred world lifts up its head
To notice –
We are double, triple blessed.
 . 
Joy Harjo
from An American Sunrise, W. W. Norton, New York NY, © 2019
 . 
 . 
❦ ❦ ❦
 . 
2020-09-08b Doughton Park Tree
 . 

Read Full Post »

Being and Becoming

Posted in Ecopoetry, Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2022| 2 Comments »

#8: 200 yds uphill from True Word Baptist Church on L past brick house R

It’s a little before 6:30 a.m. on May 28, 2022, when I pull into the dew soaked grass and walk up to the pasture fence: Stop #8. Stop #1 was 5:33, Venus rising above the tree line, the chorus just rustling awake led by Chuck-will’s-widow. Now the eastern sky is peach and the birds are full throat.

For 25+ years I’ve been counting a route for the annual Breeding Bird Survey of the US Geologic Survey (Patuxent Wildlife Research Center). These courses were established in 1966 to monitor North American bird populations; there are more than 4,000 of the 25 mile courses in the US and Canada. It’s no coincidence that the impetus arose to study declining bird numbers around the same time Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published (1962).

Since 1995 I’ve counted the Copeland route in southern Surry County into Wilkes. This year I added a second route, Mt. Airy, mainly northern Stokes County. Start ½ hour before dawn, fifty defined roadside stops a half mile apart, count every bird you hear and see in three minutes.

Stop #8. The knob of Pilot Mountain emerges from shadow. Mist rising in the hollows. Click my timer. Listen!

❦ ❦ ❦

On March 31, 2011 I posted the first offering on my new blog, including the poem Hymn by A.R. Ammons, which is still my favorite. I named the blog Griffin~Poetry, Verse and Image – I imagined combining powerful metaphor and poetic imagery with my own photography. For the past two years I’ve posted at least once a week, usually Friday mornings: today (a Wednesday) is post # 208.

Today I’m changing the site’s name. I’m dropping “Griffin~Poetry.” I’m stepping back from the spotlight. For one thing, only about 5% of the poems I’ve ever included are written by me. I’ve so far featured about 185 poets, everyone from Abbott, Tony to York, Carolyn. This blog is not about Griffin’s Poetry as author, it’s about poetry I treasure as reader.

Secondly I’m changing the header photo to Pilot Mountain at dawn from Stop #8. The Pilot has always been a landmark for our family, an ensign of home. When we lived in Ohio and drove to North Carolina once a year to visit my Grandparents, spotting the knob from Rte. 52 meant we were almost there. Every April I’ll restore the header to artwork by my wife Linda French Griffin in honor of Earth Day, but for now let Pilot Mountain guide us.

Finally, there’s this:
It belongs to the nature of every ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming.’
++++++++++++++++++++ Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
Whitehead is saying that the fundamental building blocks of reality are not atoms or quarks or anything that ‘is’ but rather the constant flux of moments coming into being, ‘becoming.’ Everything changes but everything is connected. Whitehead’s book is all but impenetrable (although there are some excellent guidebooks, not unlike the ones about birds, ferns, and flowers I carry in my pack on every outing), but a world that is obtuse, confusing, seemingly malevolent can open to enlightenment via metaphor. Through poetic imagery.

Thank you, Poetry, for offering to give us a glimpse of reality.

❦ ❦ ❦

Birds – perfect metaphor for the struggle to find meaning. Familiar but elusive, civilized but wild, possible to recognize but impossible to fully know. The Dawn Chorus begins and we are inspired to go on pilgrimages to discover our place among them.

Cuckoo Song ++++++++++++++++++ Anonymous c. 1250

SUMER is icumen in,
++ Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
++ And springth the wude nu—
+++++ Sing cuccu!

Canterbury Tales   (lines 9-12) +++++++ Geoffrey Chaucer (1340(?)–1400)

And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen al the night with open ye,
(So priketh hem nature in hir corages:
Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,

❦ ❦ ❦

And of course here are three minutes of birds from Stop #8:
American Crow (2)
Carolina Wren (2)
Gray Catbird
Yellow-breasted Chat
Northern Cardinal
Indigo Bunting

❦ ❦ ❦

2020-06-11a Doughton Park Tree

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »