Right Effort
A woodpecker’s constant work
accompanies my reading of a Zen text.
It pounds away at the bark;
I whittle away at the self.
/ / /
13 April 2026
Charlottesville VA
Day 13 of National Poetry Month
Leave a CommentCategory: Birds
Birdsongs
There’s a tufted titmouse
somewhere nearby
It really wants us all
to know it’s there
I get it — it’s not just titmice
who long to be seen
What is capitalism
but the ultimate veil
Preventing us from seeing
except in terms of worth
What are you worth to me
not for who you are
But for what you can give me
what I can extract
Like this one lonely bird
we must keep singing
Until our calls draw the neighbors
and we tear off the veils
To see the trees we’ve been missing
all this time
/ / /
12 April 2026
Charlottesville VA
Day 12 of National Poetry Month
Leave a CommentPorch Of Babel
The magic bird app
counts two dozen kinds of birds
outside our apartment
on this early Saturday morning.
I used to know
quite a few of their songs,
but like any language
it fades if you don’t use it.
Now it’s just chaos
and woodpeckers.
And mourning doves.
Sadness is universally recognizable.
And blue jays,
because so is being obnoxious.
/ / /
4 April 2026
Charlottesville VA
Day 4 of National Poetry Month
Leave a CommentWaiting For You
Birds flee the rush of the train.
They leap skyward
from the roof of the record store,
circle the parking lot
once, twice, three times,
but the train’s still going,
hundreds of cars of who knows what
heading for who knows where.
A pedestrian in a thin black leather jacket
looks apprehensively at the sky,
headphones on, oblivious to the train.
The birds, tired of waiting,
move farther off
in a swirl
of black wings, forked tails.
After what feels like too long,
a bell signals the raising of the guard rails
on either side of the tracks.
The street is moving again.
The train recedes like a distant storm.
/ / /
21 February 2026
Charlottesvile VA
the electric choir:
hybrid cars outcompete
the dawn chorus
///
16 October 2025
Charlottesville VA
listening to Geese
not the ones you’re thinking of
they’ve gone south
///
26 September 2025
Charlottesville VA
But for real, listen to this album.
Leave a Commenthead down, eyes on screen
he misses
the sparrow, completely
/ / /
13 September 2025
Charlottesville VA
in the air (Wed 1:23 PM)
a cardinal, who then swoops
low over the grass
smoke from two sticks of Japanese incense
burning in an ash-filled Mason jar
the sound of Scott Robinson’s bari sax
with the New Art Orchestra
two little brown birds (maybe house sparrows)
heading for the empty feeders
a mid-sized jet
bound for Charlotte NC
the voice of a work at the perpetually
under-construction house next door
birdsong
so much birdsong
a truck engine
on the busy road nearby
one slowly descending maple leaf
a sense of anticipation
oh, and a hawk
/ / /
7 May 2025
Charlottesville VA
dawn chorus
we’ve sung for them
for a thousand years
but they’ve never
learned the words
/ / /
5 April 2025
Charlottesville VA
Glass House
There’s an upside-down house
in the pond outside the cafe.
A squad of geese in tight formation
fly over (under?) it then
disappear beyond leafless trees.
The glass-smooth pond waits
for the return of its winged tenants.
Spring has called them north,
back across the imaginary border
recognized only by us,
discomfited as we are
by the idea of freedom.
/ / /
15 March 2025
Ruckersville VA
Birdsong
Listen to Ray Bryant (Prestige 7098)
while the kitten sleeps
on his high perch in the sun
between two Palestinian flags
we’re using as curtains
because fuck landlords that’s why.
Ray’s piano is clearly audible
over the sound of no bombs.
Ike Isaacs’ bass is right there, too,
unobscured by drones or gunfire.
Nobody’s screaming interferes
with Specs Wright’s brushwork.
Every note of John Lewis’s “Django”
floats over the comfortable silence
like birdsong.
/ / /
18 January 2025
Charlottesville VA
Tonight, My Heart Is North
1.
Swallows, bat-like,
swoop over the sycamore.
A low breeze raises blades
of grass beside our blanket.
The sounds of South Sudan
mingle with the clinks
of leashes and collars
and the sneakered footfalls of walkers.
The cat chases imaginary prey
up the trunk of the tree,
squirrels passing unnoticed
mere feet away.
2.
A break with routine:
I’ll forego a shower
so as not to miss
the sound of the rain.
I waited till the small hours
to close the bedroom window —
preferring a damp carpet
to the loss of the waterfall.
Since I was a kid
I’ve loved the car wash,
the sense of enclosure,
of safety in the flood.
This pre-dawn morning,
my bed is my transport —
from its shelter
I adore this world of water.
3.
It’s been raining for days —
today, warnings of a tornado,
but none appeared.
“If one comes I’ll run out,
let it take me,” I said.
“Over my dead body,”
they said, “I’ll knock you out.”
Tonight, my heart is north:
on the shores of the Memphramagog,
where a skunk slithers
around my legs;
on the beach at Provincetown,
kneeling in the sand
to photograph the wooden Buddha
I’d carried in my backpack;
after a movie on North Street in Pittsfield,
stopping to capture the sun
as it sinks between the buildings.
Part of me is always there —
walking the rocky beaches or
breathing in the Berkshires air or
looking over the waist-high wall at Quebec or
pulling a smooth stone from the edge of the Housatonic.
That ground — the land of my birth —
captured me a half-century ago.
It has never let me go.
I never want it to.
/ / /
September 2024
Charlottesville VA
Perhaps Hummingbirds
Perhaps there are hummingbirds —
on days when the burnweed isn’t blowing;
or when the workers in their tees and jeans
and steel-toed Redwings aren’t heaving
detritus into the temporary dumpster
with the Maximum Fill Limit sign;
or when the neighbor kids aren’t yelling “car!”
as they clomp down the street in their Crocs;
or when the cat is indoors rather than roaming
the front yard on his oft-tangled leash —
but I’ve never seen ’em.
/ / /
23 September 2024
Charlottesville VA
the dawn chorus:
leafblower, band saw
hammering, jay
/ / /
11 May 2024
Charlottesville VA
northern flicker
across the street
missed then pointed to
/ / /
10 May 2024
Charlottesville VA