This is a-- I'm going to take a vacation from the human species
completely.
This is another new poem.
The whistle is to announce that I'm about to become a bird.
[LAUGHTER]
This is a domestic retrospective.
This is a bird looking back on her life.
She is reviewing it in reverse chronology.
She starts by describing her time sitting on the egg,
then building the nest for that egg,
then finding the mate to make the nest, you know?
OK.
All the way back to her own time as a fledgling,
and from egg, to egg.
It's a bird's eye view, but it's a close up.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you.
The egg had been a long time hatching.
Forced to sit there, sun up, sun down, unmoving.
A decoy of yourself.
Only the soothing feel of the cool shell on your hot breast,
then nothing to do.
The fear of snakes, the ready beak,
the hawk in the back of your mind.
The nest had been months in the making, the gathering arduous.
Drawing the strands of hair, the bits of fur
caught in the branches, the stocks of straw
almost too large for the beak.
And then the weaving, the intricate insertions, and the
pull out toward the light again.
The mate had been a hard road finding.
All the ways it could be wrong.
So many all fluff and feathers, strutting their stuff
and gone with the first furious peck.
And then, the hunter's gun, that took the one that was the one,
and sent him to the waiting mouth of dogs.
And then the rain.
The rain, and then the need to dance the dance again.
The migration had been miles on the wing, above the curving
shore, where the pounding surf was your truest guide,
and the white froth of the breaking waves,
and the strange pull from the center of your mind
that said North, and North, and North.
And the high crying of the flock around you,
the changing light, your wings spread wide, and always
the wind.
The wind, you could fight or ride, soaring towards summer.
The first flight had not been easy.
The nest walls growing closer every day.
The open beak no longer fed us.
The other chick kept pushing you to the edge.
That endless drop below the nest.
But at the first, all dark it was, and solid overhead.
The same below, walled in with nothing
but the pulsing sound ka-doom, ka-doom, ka-doom.
The slowing beat, the fearsome sound of cracking.
The egg took forever hatching.