Basho

Vellum

First snow, first junco tracks.

A spot of clean ground. This is where the rabbit laid while snow fell.

Sapphire sky beneath a sheet of vellum.

The winter sky has netted a colony of ring-billed gulls.

The chill carried a pine siskin to my yard.

Christmas morning. The Carolina wren sings.

At the top of the sweetgum tree, a tail flicks.

Winter: The dogwood blooms with finches.

House finch: Your crown is dried blood.

Northern flicker: You carry the sun under your wings.

All day I saw the Carolina wren. Still, I felt such loneliness.

We’ve been apart for so long that I can finally think of you fondly.

A little boy rides his new toy up and down the street.

One of the juncos drags its long toenails through the snow.

There and then not there: the chickadee.

The blue jays have me surrounded.

Now the blue jays are gone. They’re off mobbing a hawk.

No shadow like a hawk’s shadow.

When I’m with birds, it doesn’t matter that I’m not with people.

The songbirds exit stage right. The Cooper’s hawk enters stage left.

Winter: A great blue heron slips on a frozen marsh.

Today, a man touched me on the arm. I did not know him.

Midfield

I want to tell you about the birds, the ones I’ve been watching for months now, as closely as I’ve ever watched anything. There is a stillness when I watch them—their presence demands mine. But there is everything else, too. What stirs in them stirs in me, emotions that fall beyond the reach of language.

It started with desire. For years, I’d wanted to know the names of birds, to be able to identify them. To know things, we must start with learning their names. Only then can we unlearn the names and understand the thing being experienced, as well as the thing doing the experiencing—that thing we call the self.

A pair of binoculars arrived in the mail this fall, along with a set of bird identification flashcards. Both were gifts from my partner. I spliced memorizing the cards with staring out my window through the binoculars. My days were woven in this way: memorize, stare, memorize, stare. I ran my fingers over the birds’ printed forms while saying their names. Fox sparrow. House sparrow.1 Lark sparrow. White-throated sparrow. I had no idea there were so many sparrows. At first, my yard only offered up house sparrows. Eventually, a pair of white-throated sparrows arrived and dazzled me with their black-and-white helmets. Thrilled that I could identify them, I screamed their name in the style of a blue jay’s alarm call: “White-throated sparrow! White-throated sparrow!” The soundwaves my voice created hit the glass in front of me. The pane indifferently refracted the vibrations.

My world swelled after I realized there was more than one type of sparrow. How crude was my perception that I had lumped so many species into one? I widened my search from my backyard to area parks, meadows, tallgrass prairies, wetlands, and wildlife refuges waiting for the quiet to be parted by a sound akin to a flutist trilling while playing wind tones on her instrument. No note, just the airy pairing of consonants amplified by the flute’s long silver body. “Trrrrrr, trrrrrr.” The trills lasted a few seconds, long enough for a sparrow to move from the meadow to a nearby tree, or from a blade of grass to the water, or simply to move away from me. “Trrrrrr, trrrrrr.” A scramble of wings. Most of the time, I saw no more than a smear of color, like someone swiping oil paints with his thumb. Then nothing. Silence returned. It was a companion, this silence. I came to feel as if both of us were waiting for another bird to stir—to relieve my disquiet and to relieve silence of the burden of being silence.

Not every sparrow was a smear. I saw my first savannah sparrows at Heritage Park, where they foraged in patchy grass near an old brick silo. Like an accent color used sparingly, yellow patches above their eyes elevated their otherwise drab appearance. I first saw Harris’s sparrows at the Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve. They scurried into a group of shrubs as my partner and I drove past. They seemed to pose as I trained my binoculars on them. One had the darkest face and crown of any Harris’s sparrow I’ve seen so far, features that would ensure a high rank among his quarrel. The wheat-colored spots on either side of his head made him look like he was wearing earmuffs.

I saw white-crowned sparrows for the first time at the preserve where I saw the Harris’s sparrows. They were part of a flutter mobbing the feeder outside the educational center. My first fox sparrow surprised me at Longview Lake. I hadn’t heard its trill as it left the meadow, but suddenly it poked its head out of an evergreen just above me. “This is the red sparrow,” I thought. “Red, red, red. Red like the fox.” That was the same day we saw a rangy coyote on the side of the highway. How slow the animal seemed, how sapless, a stark contrast to the birds in the meadow.

Loess Bluffs National Wildlife Preserve gave me my first song sparrows. My first chipping sparrows hugged the water at the KCP&L Wetlands, a visit that was also notable because of the racist and anti-Semitic graffiti someone had carved into the bird blind at the wetland’s entrance.

Baker Wetlands offered up the shy Le Conte’s sparrow, whom I happened upon as I was taking a photo of the switchgrass next to a mowed path. He balanced between two blades, one foot on each, exposing his blond breast and white belly. He sang, but I don’t remember his song. I was overcome by his beauty: his soft gold face and striped crown, the patchwork of browns on his back that reminded me of the mottling on a hawk, his cocked tail. I was also overcome with how blithe he seemed, surfing in the grass, body shifting and shifting again in the air. “Alive,” I thought. “This bird is alive, through and through.” I had been reading about the Le Conte’s sparrow the day before visiting Baker, though I didn’t make the connection until later. What I read described them as being difficult to see because of their secretive nature. The phrase “secretive nature” made it sound like the Le Conte’s was a gumshoe, a spy, or worse—nothing like the glib creature I had encountered.

Lake Perry is not where I had my first or even second American tree sparrow sighting, but it is here where I had my most meaningful experience with them. I found them where the edge of the lake fed a small inlet. There, surrounded by trees, the tree sparrows (and a few song sparrows) pulsed and trundled at the water’s edge like sprites. They were bathing, and I was watching without their knowledge. I’d crept across a rough-shorn field and made my way through unkempt trees to bear witness to this ritual. All along the section of the shore, as well as in the inlet, sparrows bobbled, sending a volley of water droplets in every direction. I’d never seen anything more joyful, and that joy found its way into my body. “This little world,” I thought. “What have I been missing?” I felt like I’d been born the wrong size. The human-sized world was not nearly as enchanting as this Lilliputian one.

Not unlike the Le Conte’s sparrow, I am becoming more secretive as I watch birds. I skulk about in their world, which has no need for me. I move slowly. I crouch. I crawl. I sit motionless with my legs crossed until parts of my body go numb. I stand looking out and out, seemingly at nothing. My partner makes line drawings of the landscape as he waits for me. Or he listens to podcasts. Or he goes on walks that loop back to where he will find me, still sitting or standing in the same place.

But I am not in the same place. The stillness, the watching—and what I am watching—is changing me in ways that words can’t properly express. Basho’s come close:

Midfield,
attached to nothing,
the skylark singing.

Perhaps that’s it, or at least part of it. The birds are attached to nothing. I am attached to nothing. There we are, held together by the field, singing with life.

—

I just learned that house sparrows aren’t actually sparrows. They’re weaver finches.

Backer-Bryom

For two decades, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically. Some poets and writers have their own dedicated pages.

—

My birds of prey are not bomb / droppers, but my broken immune system clawing / and pecking inside my body’s basement. — Sara Backer

Are we willing to put love into action even if we ourselves don’t physically survive? — Carolyn Baker

If the answer is ‘yes,’ then two things are essential. First, bearing witness to the deepening horrors of climate chaos; and second, committing ourselves to compassionate service to all other living beings—since they are going to suffer with us. — Carolyn Baker

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

—

by Li Bai, translated By Sam Hamill

To be disabled is to have a minority body, but not to have a broken or defective body. — Elizabeth Barnes

Midfield,
attached to nothing,
the skylark singing.

— Basho

Wherever we are in life, whatever people we are responding to, let us be witnesses to those who are most abandoned, who need our care. — Father Michael Bassano

I think nature is personal. — Jan Beatty

On this thoroughly unique and irreplaceable Saturday morning, it was like this. This is my inadequate attempt to capture it, even though it can’t be captured, can’t be preserved. — Lynn Behrendt

This is my inadequate attempt to capture it, even though it can’t be captured, can’t be preserved. — Lynn Behrendt

It is silly: this constant falling, this ebullient animal / tumble, this dizzy, over-worded, breathless groping / to some place only named in ancient, unknown tongues. — John Belk

When the hot air fades / when the dampness comes / in sleep / in waking / when I am ancient in my movements / a humming corpse / resting on / pillows / How will I be found / will they feed me the coins I will need / Who will kiss my falling / when I fall — Chase Berggrun

I give my best to the shape / of clouds and the dead / in their resting places — Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

I give my best to the shape / of clouds and the dead / in their resting places — Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

There are four channels on the black and white TV which seem swept from the cosmic corners of an emptiness you’re learning about in school, along with Sex Ed and its ragged chalkboard diagrams of ungainly organs deployed with all the dignity of trying to smuggle accordions across state lines. — Simeon Berry

There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places. — Wendell Berry

Even after we called the neighbors for water, more water, and the volunteer fire department came to mist the dying herd, cattle kept falling. They died all day long until even the sun grew tired of watching. — Darla Biel

Each moment / builds a new universe / and I need to find / you there. — Simeon Berry

The only way people can be writers is if they feel like they can be one. — Lisa Bickmore

When you memorize a poem, it inhabits you, and you inhabit it. — Kim Blaeser

Writing is not language, but merely a way of recording language by visible marks. — Leonard Bloomfield, Language (1933)

A cocktail dress achieves its effect through elegant abbreviation; shouldn’t the poem do the same? — Dave Bonta

And in any case the whole notion of luck represents an absurd attempt to project consistent, self-centered narratives onto chaotic, impersonal events. — Dave Bonta

We are little more than large and awkward guests in a world of insects, I sometimes think.— Dave Bonta

we bought it all / the cheat and the war / and the nothing / but night tomorrow — Dave Bonta

The subject of pain is the business I am in. To give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses. — Louise Bourgeois

What modern art means is that you have to keep finding new ways to express yourself, to express the problems, that there are no settled ways, no fixed approach. This is a painful situation, and modern art is about this painful situation of having no absolutely definite way of expressing yourself. — Louise Bourgeois

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat. ― Jorge Luis Borges

Something signals me / to skulk the pasture with the soft paw / of the body, to snap the hasp / and climb inside the kitchen window. / A wolf’s no scavenger. / Hunger licks its tongue / across the danger of my teeth. — Ash Bowen

It seems illogical to preserve a social order when the social order is itself only a false dilemma of death. — Anne Boyer

Emotions … continue to cause suffering until we experience them where they live in our body. — Tara Brach

Sensations in the body are ground zero, the place where we directly experience the entire play of life. — Tara Brach

When we leave our bodies, we leave home. — Tara Brach

When you’re with fear and befriending it, the who you are enlarges, and [the fear] becomes like a wave in your ocean. — Tara Brach

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. — Ray Bradbury

The comfort / of unhealthy patterns blushing harder than rubies. / I would do what I couldn’t as a child and turn from you. — Traci Brimhall

We gender people as soon as we see them. That’s just the American way. — KB Brookins

Dying or illness is a kind of poetry. It’s a derangement. — Anatole Broyard

Accessibility wasn’t one of the virtues I learned coming up. Great poems are rough, crude, loud, gnarled, hermetic. They are thinking great ideas but they aren’t talking to you about it. — Sharon Bryan

When you know what a poem is trying to do and understand how it is working, then you become useful. The poem has every clue you’re ever going to get. Stop worrying about what’s not there. You can do what you want with a poem, but it’s only OK if you take it back to the poem and the poem says, Yeah, that’s OK. — Sharon Bryan

We are all born in Oklahoma, in a certain way. — Andrew Brusletten

and when people come to visit and / shoot my hours through the head they / offer nothing interesting or constructive. / I find myself resenting them and / their chatter / their idle ways / since I am always fighting for each minute — Charles Bukowski

Like a hummingbird in our hands, we must hold our convictions with a relaxed fist — Laura Caitlin Burke

You can tell them anything if you just make it funny, make it rhyme. And if they still don’t understand you, then you run it one more time. — Bo Burnham

We grow wings to fly but have roots to return to and there, and there, for the grace of God, go I. — Mark Burns

One very important aspect of art is that it makes people aware of what they know and don’t know they know. … Once the breakthrough is made, there is a permanent expansion of awareness. But there is always a reaction of rage, of outrage, at the first breakthrough. … So the artist, then, expands awareness. And once the breakthrough is made, this becomes part of the general awareness. — William S. Burroughs

it takes me 10 minutes / to write a poem / sometimes / & then / I want to whisper or / shout it about / town — Mairead Byrne

With our thoughts we make the world. — from the Dhammapada, as translated by Thomas Byrom