Category: Literature

Fran Haley and I are hosting this week’s Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com as we prepare for April’s discussions on Ada Limon’s The Hurting Kind. You can read Fran’s prompt today here or below. Be inspired and come write with us!

Title: Birdspiration

Our Host

Fran Haley is a literacy educator with a lifelong passion for reading, writing, and dogs. She lives in the countryside near Raleigh, North Carolina, where she savors the rustic scenery and timeless spirit of place. She’s a pastor’s wife, mom of two grown sons, and the proud Franna of two granddaughters: Scout, age seven, and Micah, age two. Fran never tires of watching birds and secretly longs to converse with them (what ancient wisdom these creatures possess!). When she’s not working, serving beside her husband, being hands-on Franna, birding, or coddling one utterly spoiled dachshund, she enjoys blogging at Lit Bits and Pieces: Snippets of Learning and Life. 

Inspiration 

As previously mentioned in this series of Open Writes: Come April, Kim Johnson and I will be honoring National Poetry Month by facilitating discussion of The Hurting Kind, the most recent book by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón (you can join us via Sarah Donovan’s new Healing Kind book club). 

In preparation for this event, I came across a May 2022 interview with Angela María Spring of Electric Lit in which Limón speaks of inspiration for her book and the way humans search for community: “It’s the Earth and it’s the animals and it’s the plants and that is our community.”

What a glorious opening for birds today. 

Over several summers past, I facilitated a writing institute for teachers. We spent a portion of one session crafting poems about birds, for, truth is, everyone has a bird story of some kind. Just as we went out for lunch, two doves flew into the building to land on the windowsill of our room. How’s that for symbolism?—and awe.

Process

Listen to or read the brief transcript of Episode 674 of The Slowdown, Limón’s podcast. Here she shares a poem by Hai-Dang Phan entitled “My Ornithology (Orange-crowned Warbler)”. Note Limón’s reflection: In observing birds and their world, we learn something true about ourselves. Experience Phan’s warbler up close and personal through every rich detail in the poem.

You might also read Limón’s “The Year of the Goldfinches”.

Now, consider what you’ve learned from birds in some way. Find a kinship. You don’t have to love or even like birds; you could contemplate the Thanksgiving turkeys sacrificed for your holiday table.You might go on a birdwalk or watch awhile through your window for birdspiration. 

Explore birds and their lessons for your life in a short form like haiku, senryu, tanka, or a series of stanzas with the same number of lines. Invent a form! Phan uses three lines over and over. Consider how enjambment and varying sentence lengths can create bursts and phrases like birdsong. After all, poetry is about sound. 

Play with form today. Let your lines sing.

What truths have birds taught you?.

Fran’s Poem

Harbingers

1. That Morning You Drove Me Home From the Medical Procedure

back country byway, winter-brown grass
trees, old gray outbuildings, zipping, zipping past
small pond clearing, wood-strewn ground
bald eagle sitting roadside—too profound—

I thought it was the anesthesia
until you saw it, too,
before it flew.

And I knew.

2. On the Morning I Returned to the Hospital After Your Surgery

lanes of heavy traffic, day dawning bright
our son says you had a painful, painful night
dew on the windshield, fog in my brain
all hope of moving past this gridlock, in vain
but for the glory of autumn leaves, a-fire
against cloudless blue where a solitary flier
glides by, white head and tail gleaming in the sun…

I promise, beloved one.

Your healing
has begun.

Your Turn

Kim’s Poem

Lesson Learned

It was only fair to each pick a tour

So he picked one, I picked two.

Sled dogs and glaciers: what fun!

But a hovercraft?!  He picked a hovercraft.

I willed a smile. 

This was his vacation, too. 

We fell in love with the dogs,

Laughed at Pumpkin, whose destiny

Was clearly supposed to be different

But oh, how she tried,

Tripping over her own feet,

Tangling the ropes.

“Pumpkin!” the driver yelled

A dozen times at least.

I could tell: she’d rather be

Chasing butterflies.

We held the next generation,

Puppy teeth nipping our ears.

He spied every seal on those icebergs

I photographed them all

We stood in awe as the glacier calved

Heard its thunder, saw its majestic crash

Into the bay, baby rainbows circling

But then came hovercraft day

My forced smile, my fake excitement

Was a Christmas sweater I’d wear once

Then pass along and forget.

We stepped aboard the yellow craft,

Took off like a racecar

Over the waters of Juneau

Then abruptly stopped in deep water.

The tour guide lifted the doors.

Had we broken down?

Were we swimming?

He reached down into a bucket

Pulled out a fish

Threw it high into the air.

From out of nowhere, the talons

of a huge Bald Eagle swooped in and

clutched the fish,

so close its mighty wingspan

made a cheek-brushing breeze.

It called its whole family

Uncles, aunts, cousins once- and twice-removed

“Fish! Over here!” it surely said.

Or perhaps they all knew to watch

For the yellow hovercraft,

Put on a show for the hovercraft wives

To redeem the husbands.

Baby eaglets at the tip top of a tall tree

Were the best “catch” of the day –

We caught a binoculared glimpse, but not a photo

Five hundred shots of eagles, two clear favorites

But most importantly, a lesson learned:

Step aboard, even when the smile is fake

It just might become the truest smile

Of the whole adventure. 

He won the tour picking.

(He knew what he was doing).