Poetry Friday: Redstart

Sometimes it helps to take your eyes off the news and look at the birds. At least, that's what I'm finding. I suppose anything that's completely unaffected by tidings of virus mayhem would work as well, but there's just something about those birds. I got in the habit of sitting in my chair on my front porch during our weeks of lockdown here in Haiti (for political reasons, not health reasons) in our fall semester. Having to stay home made me decide that I needed to learn to identify the flora and fauna in my own yard, partly to keep from losing my mind and partly just to shift my focus.

I wrote this poem about my birdwatching the other morning, when I saw this guy (photo from eBird.com):

Redstart

I see the American redstart
first thing in the morning
before I even sit down in my birdwatching chair
and before I can get my binoculars out of their case.

It flashes the brilliant orange on its wings,
vivid against their black background,
as it flies from the ground to a branch above.

I open my Notes app
and type “American” with my thumbs

and surely it is a good thing
that instead of
“president,”
“hegemony,”
or even
“flag,”
my predictive text suggests:

redstart.

Ruth, from thereisnosuchthingasagodforsakentown.blogspot.com

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