Author’s Note:

In the fast-changing world, one in many places having urban sprawl uncreative and uniform, taking over green spaces and wildlife habitats, it is sometimes healthy and soulful to pause and reflect upon something like birds. They are in their flying moments anyhow, emancipated from all this trouble. I saw the other day a green area that had been taken over and built with concrete buildings that went right to the sidewalk that meets the road. There was literally nothing left to let a soul know that there had even been trees and space there once. Not an urban planner or a politician, but a lowly nature poet, I nevertheless often choose to concentrate on phenomena that keeps a bit of hope. And the birds are part of that. 

Seagulls 

I liked them. Often, I wondered why more people didn’t stop to appreciate them. They had a waiting power, a patience, and knew how to go in for the long haul or the slow day. I began to realize that the speckled ones seemed more aggressive and I wondered about that. Sometimes a solitary seagull could be seen up above, and I thought of the Jonathan Living Seagull from the famous book and I would sometimes adorn a mental poetic license and pretend that it was Jonathan. 

Hawks

The hawks by the lake just ten minutes from the town were numerous and black. Sometimes there were red-tailed ones. So high in the azure sky they flew and glided. But they had a talent for appearing and disappearing seemingly suddenly. And there was a hawk that lived by the theatre, the movie house, and he sometimes came down from the roof and alighted on a No Trespassing sign whilst looking in the grounds there for prey. He stopped coming around though and I learned that I missed him but had been happy to see him to begin with, to have witnessed him at all. 

Brown Doves 

By the roofs and houses in the suburbs. And one time there was one that didn’t fly away but looked at me as if a message was being given. Or that the dove was a message. Who knows what it all means? Felt auspicious though. Seemed like whatever the message was that it was a good one. When I researched them a bit, I read that they are also considered peace doves though with peace doves of course one quickly thinks of the generic white dove…

Pigeons 

Those guys go faster than most people might think, and all those colours make for something very interesting to observe. Look at them get some life sustaining water in what we think of as prosaic and ‘nothing to write home about’ puddles. Also, up to the movie house they go and sit on the large signs and rooftop edge. 

Crows 

I saw the black crows. Took some pictures. So 

cool. I guess they get a bad rap in a way. But they are all right. I wonder whatever happened to them now. I wonder just what the crow knows and if they are harbingers of someone or something. Harken harken harken I do to see if like a suburban mystic I can find out. 

Blue Jay 

Sometimes in twos. They are beautiful and don’t even look real. I admit, I find them difficult to photograph as they fly away so fast. ‘I won’t harm you bird, no, I just wanted a picture….’ But they aren’t hearing it. No way. They are seen. Then they are just as quickly gone. 

Orange Oriole Deceased in the Meadow

It was sad to see the bird there in the meadow. I didn’t photograph it because I don’t photograph dead things. Let it rest in peace. It was in the sand where the old farmer that gave us permission to walk had built a sandpit for some reason. I did think it was a shame to see the bird as I’d prefer to view something like that, alive and thriving, especially with that colourful countenance. 

Cardinal 

Cardinal was in the boulevard tree. Just passing through I think. I loved it. See it in your imagination if you will against the healthy green leaves with the blue sky above peaking down through the branches. Then, go Cardinal go to whenever you do and be well. 

Heron 

There were herons down by the marsh. A walking bridge had been built there. Unfortunately, too nearby, thy want to build a development. People fight the development to protect the marsh but its

same story. This goes back and forth and delays it all a bit, but it will get built. The process is corrupted by greed. And what they build is urban sprawl grey and unoriginal and too crowded. But I focus for now on the wondrous heron, which some have argued is the world’s most beautiful bird. It is beyond graceful, that is for sure, impossibly poetic and wondrous when it flies. 

Shakespeare’s Birds 

Someone had the idea to bring every species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare to North America. And that’s a true story. But the Starlings I have thought they are called, caused much damage to crops and other, making economic trouble. There were for while hundreds it must have been, on a tree that overlooks my backyard. They are trying to live like anyone, I guess. Then they flew away and I didn’t see them again. 

Wild Turkey 

By the sides of roads. But sometimes hiding in the walking trails. Faster at

taking off than I thought. Someone once told me there are no real wild turkeys just escaped ones from farms, ranches, properties, and such. I guess. I understood what he meant. But they are wild out there, nevertheless. The reality of it is that many are in the wild. 

Turkey Vulture 

The first time I saw one it seemed so big and ominous or something that I thought the fabled Thunderbird of cryptozoology was perhaps real. It was atop a brick chimney gazing down and in. Wow. Cool. The second one stared at me at the exit of a forest one dusk. And I saw many-many of them and got a picture I love, in a tree where they seem to gather in the summer.

Two Falcons 

Only once for the two falcons. In a faraway walking trail deep in the woodlands wild. I sensed something to my right and paused and looked. They were standing on a tree that had fallen but not right over to the ground. It got stuck midair on another standing tree. These things, the falcons, seemed regal and ancient and I loved them as I love all birds though I am not an official bird watcher but a nature poet. Mostly a bird is a bird and a flower is a flower and a tree is a tree. Not out of any disrespect for the nuance and classification of it all, but because I move on to the next cloud or snake or insect and am a jack of all trades and master of none as the old saying goes. 

Bird Unknown Calling in the Night 

It’s good to leave a mystery. I noticed it’s song one summer on the porch. And occasionally hear it, more like a ghost-phantom than a real thing. But it’s there somewhere. 

Bird bird who do you call,

Bird bird,

In summer’s enthrall,

Bird bird,

I can’t see you at all,

Bird bird, singing after

Sun’s fall…

—-

Brian Barbeito is a Canadian poet, writer, and photographer. His most recent work, a fourth collection of prose poems and landscape/nature photography, is called Audio Static Angels.