National Poetry Month: April 1: I Kept Getting Books About Birds
Martha
I Kept Getting Books About Birds
Catherine Pierce
as if recognizing the yellow-winged one
at the feeder, the shiny black one hopping
through the grass might somehow
become enough. As if knowing grackle or thrush
or prothonotary warbler might give me a handle
of sorts—something to hold as all around me
the books piled up and the hours too,
time unrolling like a lush carpet
that caught me again and again,
foot sinking into the plush, and there went
three hours, six days, half a year.
I kept getting books about birds as if
in the Great Ledger of What I Had Accomplished
I could simply fill in some Latin names
and notes on skeletal pneumaticity
and be done. I kept getting books about birds
because those days I had no reason
to go to bed, and so the night stretched
and yawned and stayed awake,
because my corn fritters from scratch
didn't pan out, because the garden had all
the hot peppers the neighborhood could eat,
but the tomatoes stayed hard and green
no matter how I coaxed them, because
I wanted to write a novel but never made it
past a protagonist, because I wanted
to understand how some people galloped
through their lives as if they were astride
tall white horses, and here I was
spending my drawn-out days researching
ailments and likelihoods. I kept getting
books about birds, and they were beautiful,
the books, glossy and thin, and I looked
at them, and I stroked their smooth covers,
but I'd be lying if I said I ever read one.
They were so dull, with their migration
pattern charts and seed particulars,
and I knew as I looked at the congregating
backyard starlings or whatever they were
that the only real solution was to walk outside
and startle them so that they rose in one
of their gorgeous rivers, one of their gorgeous
bed sheets, one of their gorgeous
choreographies of shadow, and to see, at last,
in that one bright, cacophonous moment
something I had made.
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O cats, o kittens, it's here! National Poetry Month and 30 full days of poems for you.
Find 'em on Tumblr, over on Bluesky, via RSS, or (ta-da) in your email inbox. To have a pal sign up for emails, they can head over here and click the Join group link at the top of the page – or send a blank email here.
You can also go spelunking through the poems sent on this date in…
2025: Bad New Government, Emily Berry
2024: vocabulary, Safia Elhillo
2023: Reasons to Live Through the Apocalypse, Nikita Gill
2022: New Year, Kate Baer
2021: Instructions on Not Giving Up, Ada Limón
2020: Motto, Bertolt Brecht
2019: Separation, W.S. Merwin
2018: Good Bones, Maggie Smith
2017: Better Days, A.F. Moritz
2016: Jenny Kiss’d Me, Leigh Hunt
2015: The Night House, Billy Collins
2014: Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls, Nico Alvarado
2013: Nan Hardwicke Turns Into a Hare, Wendy Pratt
2012: A Short History of the Apple, Dorianne Laux
2011: New York Poem, Terrance Hayes
2010: On Wanting to Tell [ ] about a Girl Eating Fish Eyes, Mary Szybist
2009: A Little Tooth, Thomas Lux
2008: The Sciences Sing a Lullabye, Albert Goldbarth
2007: Elegy of Fortinbras, Zbigniew Herbert
2006: When Leather is a Whip, by Martin Espada
2005: Parents, William Meredith
Let's do this thing.