WEBVTT

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This is a-- I'm going to take a
vacation from the human species

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completely.

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This is another new poem.

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The whistle is to announce that
I'm about to become a bird.

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[LAUGHTER]

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This is a domestic
retrospective.

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This is a bird looking
back on her life.

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She is reviewing it
in reverse chronology.

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She starts by describing
her time sitting on the egg,

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then building the
nest for that egg,

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then finding the mate to
make the nest, you know?

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OK.

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All the way back to her
own time as a fledgling,

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and from egg, to egg.

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It's a bird's eye view,
but it's a close up.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Thank you.

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The egg had been a
long time hatching.

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Forced to sit there, sun
up, sun down, unmoving.

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A decoy of yourself.

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Only the soothing feel of the
cool shell on your hot breast,

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then nothing to do.

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The fear of snakes,
the ready beak,

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the hawk in the
back of your mind.

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The nest had been months in the
making, the gathering arduous.

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Drawing the strands of
hair, the bits of fur

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caught in the branches,
the stocks of straw

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almost too large for the beak.

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And then the weaving, the
intricate insertions, and the

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pull out toward the light again.

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The mate had been a
hard road finding.

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All the ways it could be wrong.

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So many all fluff and
feathers, strutting their stuff

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and gone with the
first furious peck.

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And then, the hunter's gun, that
took the one that was the one,

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and sent him to the
waiting mouth of dogs.

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And then the rain.

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The rain, and then the need
to dance the dance again.

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The migration had been miles
on the wing, above the curving

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shore, where the pounding
surf was your truest guide,

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and the white froth
of the breaking waves,

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and the strange pull from
the center of your mind

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that said North, and
North, and North.

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And the high crying of
the flock around you,

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the changing light, your
wings spread wide, and always

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the wind.

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The wind, you could fight or
ride, soaring towards summer.

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The first flight
had not been easy.

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The nest walls growing
closer every day.

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The open beak no longer fed us.

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The other chick kept
pushing you to the edge.

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That endless drop
below the nest.

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But at the first, all dark
it was, and solid overhead.

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The same below,
walled in with nothing

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but the pulsing sound
ka-doom, ka-doom, ka-doom.

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The slowing beat, the
fearsome sound of cracking.

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The egg took forever hatching.

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