Poetry Friday: Migrations

My school year has had a bit of a slow start, with a couple of days where I didn't have much to do. That will change soon. When you read this post on Friday, I'll be having a super busy day, teaching six periods, five different levels of French. But because I've been sitting around some this week, I had the chance to listen to a program called "Words in Flight" that came out in February. (You can find it here.) It includes some interviews with poets and lots of poems about birds. 

 

It was hard to choose just one of these poems to share, but because I've been thinking a lot about migration, immigration, moving around from country to country, I went with this villanelle by Sean Hill.

 

 

 

The Western Tanager or Why Montana
Piranga ludoviciana

by Sean Hill

 

Are wanderings the same as migrations?
I came to Montana for love, which sometimes is
how we know our destinations.
The Western Tanager flies here for procreation 
when the snow goes wet, puddles, runs, and takes to 
far wandering. Is this the same as migration?
A life is the sum of grand and modest peregrinations. 
Communities bloom at the meeting of opportunity 
and ambition and can be a way to know our destinations.
A fire-engine red head cooling to orange to 
a sunny yellow body with those charcoal wings, 
the male western tanager flashes conflagration
or an eastern autumn, in flight. One, familiar, greeted 
me shortly after we both arrived letting me know 
our wanderings weren’t the same—his, a migration.
In a stand of ponderosas where a blanket of snow lay for decades 
or longer, the dendrologist says these trees moved up from what’s 
Mexico as that quiet water pulled back, a different migration
—moving seed by seed north generationally migrating 
to where they had been and where they could live 
never asking how do we know our destination?
Why Montana? One among my interrogations, 
both public and private like How big is a home? 
Are wanderings the same as migrations?
and How do I know my destinations?

 

 

How thankful I am for migrations, both of birds and of people! How our lives are enriched by these visitors from elsewhere, and how we will be impoverished if we continue to remove people as has become so common around the world. 

 

I wrote a poem in 2021 that explored some of these ideas; you can read it here.

 

Molly is hosting the Poetry Friday roundup this week.