Poetry Friday: "Why I Need the Birds" by Lisel Mueller

When I was young, I didn't think much about birds, know much about birds, or care much about birds. They were part of the landscape, obviously. They were around, I was around, live and let live, blah-blah-blah. I suppose we co-existed blithely, in that way creatures who don't have an urgent need for one another can do. We each — robins, wrens, and I — went about our business, conducting it admirably without caring that the other was nearby. 

I remember once, sometime in my twenties, I think, when I was out for a walk with my friend Jack. We heard a bird with an intriguing call, and I said, "I wonder what kind of bird that is?" A beat, and he said, "Holly would know," at the precise time I was saying, "Atticus would know." Our respective spouses, you see, were the bird people. They were the ones with a knowledge of and a love for nature. They were the Dickon Sowerbys who would know what was growing in a secret garden and what a robin was trying to say. 

I can't say I consciously sought to increase my knowledge of birds over the years of our marriage, but somehow birds have become a part of it. (I wrote about the laudable stubbornness of our swallows here, and mentioned the return of the swallows to Edmistrano here. And, ummm, somewhere along the way I started calling them "our" swallows?) When I was very young and very stupid, I thought an interest in birds was a thing for old people. But last year, when Atticus got excited about the Merlin Bird ID app, I got kind of excited about it too. (I mean, honestly, it's really, really cool. Open the app, it records every sound it hears, and then it tells you what birds you're eavesdropping on. Cool.) 

"But Karen," you might say, "you have proven your theory about birds and old people, because you are old now." Ummm, just go check out the Merlin app! You'll thank your elders! 

Oh, and read this poem too! It's by Lisel Mueller, a Pulitzer-winning poet whom I've only just discovered. 

Lisel understood. And while it's likely that Mueller wrote "Why I Need the Birds" when she was not-young (and unlike some of us, she was never stupid), I have a feeling that she — like Holly, like Atticus —  simply knew her whole life that birds were a miracle of creation worth every moment of attention we pay them. 

Why I Need the Birds
by Lisel Mueller

(1924-2020) 

When I hear them call
in the morning, before
I am quite awake,
my bed is already traveling
the daily rainbow,
the arc toward evening;
and the birds, leading
their own discreet lives
of hunger and watchfulness,
are with me all the way,
always a little ahead of me
in the long-practiced manner
of unobtrusive guides.

(Read the rest here.) 

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The Poetry Friday round-up this week is being hosted by the ever-wonderful Linda Baie of TeacherDance.

Photo thanks to Pixabay.