Words That Burn

Three Birds, by Matthew Brenneman (1960-)

1. ALBATROSS

    A thousand miles of gale-lashed sea
Is nothing to this winged mariner.
    Of all the birds, he would prefer
This emptiness to earth's solidity,

    The gray abstraction of the waves
Rolling beneath great tapered wings, whose span
    Would dwarf the stature of a man
And lightly glide where sailors meet their graves.

    He has no use for tulip trees,
For lawns at twilight, purple hyacinths,
    For shelter from the labyrinths
Of hurricanes, for any certainties

    Or faiths. He'd rather do with less
Than nothing; for him, nothing will suffice.
    If solitude exacts a price,
He's rich in the cold coin of loneliness.

    The very winds that bear him tear
His song and scatter it like so much spray.
    And yet he sings it anyway,
And builds his soaring castles in the air.

2. BARN SWALLOW

A hanging porch-light's broken bulbless cup
    Will do as well as anything.
She fits it to her purpose, flying up
    With spoils of tugs and rummaging

To the amusement of the chickadees
    And cracks of old black crows
Who lack her sense of possibilities,
    Until her nest takes shape, and grows.

Is she content? She sometimes scans the sky
    For hawks on cloudless nights in June.
Those peregrines and red-tails terrify
    And thrill her! They seem to brush the moon.

But even so, there's something to be said
    For feathering a kind of heaven
On a few twigs and some frayed bits of thread,
    From what she finds that she is given

In the detritus other birds would leave.
    Why should she be particular?
The mettle of a nest is in the weave.
    It's all material to her.

3. SNOWY EGRET

    Light rain lifting. Pond like glass.
The shadblow's given way to dogwood and
    Forsythia, which summons bees
Through stands of arrowwood and sassafras.
He loves this marsh, its rich interstices,
This confluence of sea and sky and land.

    All through the spring-tide's ebb he stands
Balanced on legs like frail black sticks, stock-still
    And focused as a samurai,
Until some flicker in the tangled strands
Of underwater grass attracts his eye
And triggers like a spring his darting bill.

    Often as not, it's true, his hope
Eludes him, disappearing in the grass,
    So close yet just beyond his aim,
Into the watery kaleidoscope.
But he is captivated just the same.
Light rain lifting: pond as still as glass...