The birds are turning into flowers.
For Easter, I’m hiding peanuts around the yard for the birds.
Northern flicker: The last time I saw you, you were clinging to the sweetgum in the rain.
Don’t go, nuthatch. I was just learning how to watch you.
The American goldfinches are starting to look like marshmallow Peeps.
Today is rain and birdsong.
My yard is covered in puddles and juncos.
The red-winged blackbird returned to the yard today.
Haters gonna hate, but at least I get to come home to birds.
I miss the red-winged blackbird so much!
Today, I stopped to help a dog who was running loose. A woman came out of her house and said she wanted the dog to run into traffic and die. This kind of thing is why I’m a solitudinarian.
The Carolina wren loves to eat suet then sing from the silver maple.
After eleven days, the red-winged blackbird left me.
I love you more when you are with a dog.
Live alone, die alone. Live together, die alone.
Two days ago, I saw a male northern cardinal feed a safflower seed to a female.
I put down grass seed, and the birds ate it all.
It’s as if birds don’t care about lawns.
My skills include making the bed while my chihuahua is still in it.
A blue jay riffles through the leaves in my neighbor’s gutter.
Near the heronry, squirrels are busy making nests out of plastic grocery bags.
What have I done today? Nothing awful, I hope.
Today was strange because I didn’t see any hawks.
This half-tamed world is a respite from misery.
Red maple blossoms: How can I not have hope when I look at you?
Heartbreaking: As we age, we lose the ability to hear high-pitched bird songs.
You know who visited my yard today? A golden-crowned kinglet, that’s who.
Today, I misread the word “brides” as “birdies.”
My favorite chipmunk just climbed up the side of my birdbath and got a drink. So cute!
It’s almost time to put the hummingbird swings out.
A red-bellied woodpecker stashes safflower seeds in holes drilled by a yellow-bellied sapsucker.
Three blue jays gather in the nearest tree as I fill their peanut feeder.
When I stepped away from the window, the ice in the birdbath turned to water.
The hammock is covered in silver maple blossoms.
It’s hard to hear the red-winged blackbird’s melody when several hundred are singing asynchronously.
Here and there, mourning doves have settled into the earth like river rocks.
The male red-winged blackbird returned to my yard today. The greedy part of me is delighted.
I’m listening to the train and thinking about the juvenile Cooper’s hawk I saw this evening.
Two barred owls are singing to each other in my neighbor’s tree.
Two red-tailed hawks fight over rights to a marsh seeded with red-winged blackbirds. Each leaves with nothing.
Starling, your feathers are puddled motor oil on an asphalt road.
Nothing captures the entwined sense of desolation and hope more than a dead tree full of live birds.
The molting goldfinch is a half-painted canvas.
As soon as the Cooper’s hawk is gone, juncos pop out from their hiding places.
Two northern cardinals chase each other from tree to tree.
Bare trees flutter with finches.
The church bells next door don’t observe daylight saving time.
I dreamed the poet who assaulted me sent me a beautiful tree for my garden along with a note that read, “Keep quiet.”
We trimmed the trees but left the nesting cavities untouched.
I have a lot of time to look around.
A red-tailed hawk is perched on the tornado siren tower.
Moments don’t really exist, do they? They aren’t apart from anything else.
The robins wonder why I live in a structure on their land.
Help. I woke up with myself again.
I love it when blue jays let me in on their jokes.
The blue jay cried “kwirr kwirr” from the sweetgum as I filled the peanut feeder.
All morning, a blue jay has imitated a red-bellied woodpecker.
Every moment, I have a choice. Every breath, a choice.
Friendship formula for other people: time together + intentional self-revealing = feeling close to others. Friendship formula for me: time together + intentional self-revealing = feelings of panic, shame and fear.
I feel like I walked across a long bridge and nobody followed me. I stand here alone.
I don’t want you to be someone who enjoys more beauty. I want you to be someone who causes less destruction.
Tender, tender. Be tender.
Good writing is a bell ringing me back to life.
My mouth always feels like it’s falling off.
My life, as a whole, is divided into two parts: before trauma and after trauma. At this point, I barely remember before trauma.
Trauma passes through the gut in three hours, through the small bowel in four. It takes seventy-six hours for trauma to traverse the large bowel, but it never leaves the body. The undigestable parts stain fingers, swell joints, weave their way into every strand of hair.
I know when I don’t feel safe. I know when I don’t feel seen or heard. I know to avoid those situations whenever possible.
If the birds are in the trees, I want to be alone.
Like a scorned lover, the wind tore the mylar balloons to pieces.
Then: How can I make my life into art? Now: How I can just stay alive?
Sound is always leading me into ditches.
I feel like you used to be more than flowers.
Lie on the ground with me, neighbor. We’ll sort this all out when the wind dies down.
First Law of Wind: There is no wind without things.
Second Law of Wind: Great wind descends into stillness.
Third Law of Wind: You cannot escape from wind.
We can only know the wind through the things it touches.
You crossed the boundary long ago, so take what you want. This leaf. This seed. This wagon. This hoe.
Have my watering can and two-tiered birdbath, my chipmunk and his major and minor hoards.
What’s this? Your pill sorter. The chambers are chalky and taste like salt.
Your plastic will become my plastic. Your glass, my glass. I want your caps, your lids, your Juicy Juice boxes and their delicate little straws. Let it all blow my way.
I’ll retrieve your balloons with a cherry picker—deflated hearts that announce your love.
Take my birds as a sign of goodwill. Let them sing you back to joy.
I walk around picking up your branches, your receipts, your skiffs of tinfoil.
Your inflatable packing is strewn across my yard like entrails.
You once held the mylar balloons that quiver in the silver maple.
I come to know you through the things the wind blows from your yard to mine.
Snow. Wind. A pair of red-winged blackbirds clings to the crabapple.
You can tell a lot about a person from their detritus.
Dried hydrangea blossoms stumble along the culdesac, the wind’s playthings.
Two mylar Valentine’s Day balloons are stuck high in my neighbor’s silver maple. They aren’t just an eyesore; they pose a threat to area birds. This isn’t how you tell someone you love them.
Spring: Plastic bags snagged in the stubble field are turned into the soil.
First response to suffering: Because I have suffered, I don’t care about the suffering of others. Second response to suffering: Because I have suffered, I don’t want to see others suffer.
I laid the goldfinch to rest on a bed of moss and covered him with dried hydrangea blossoms.
Today, my Turin horse was a small bird who died because he tried to fly into the reflection of a tree.
If I hold your neck, will it unbreak? If I open your eyes, will you see? If I run my fingers along your feathers, will you fly? Summer is coming, your brightest season. Now you lay in my hand, your toes curling as if around a branch. I breathe and you don’t.
Unable to accept what is, I tried to will a dead goldfinch back to life today.
On new asphalt, the muddy tracks of Canada geese look like hieroglyphs.
There should be a brand of ice cream called Sorrow.
I kept one thousand words in a cage, then I set them free.
The next time you see a bird, know that part of me is with you.
Today, my Turin horse was a pair of bluebirds trying to nest in a construction zone.
Dana Henry Martin 