Mockingbird, tanager, thrush—you liltwings,
you hopscotch-skippers—forgive us our calling,
noun-bound to be proper, to freight
your pinions with what yokes our weight
to gravity, law, numbers, other fables.
Forgive us our starry quills, our parables—
rook, raven, crow, canary, dove—
our willful migration from love
to symbol. Wind-sickles, forgive us the sins
visited on Icarus, his fathers and sons:
our conceit in zeppelin and satellite, the feast
of false hawks, false eagles. Forgive us as priests
in slums and picket lines forgive the church:
in vigilance, mining the breach—
that sky—for something that will not be owned.
Cardinal, finch—forgive us our lone
hiding behind bushes, spying you out
when we should be flying at your side, not
from pride but from humility: that soaring
force that finds its power in adoring.
"Prayers to the Birds" originally appeared in Horse and Rider (Texas Tech University Press, 2010) and is published here with the kind permission of the author.
The ALL Review is pleased to present our How to Live series, poems chosen to help readers navigate these difficult and rapidly changing times.
Cover photo by Stacy Brand, https://stacybrand.smugmug.com/
