Our posts on where birds meet verse are some of the most popular on the blog, beating out even wood-warblers. We therefore decided that it was high time that our poetry posts got a page of their own. Click here to see our brand-spanking-new Bird Poems Page.
Corey is a New Yorker who lived most of his life in upstate New York but has lived in Queens since 2008. He's only been birding since 2005 but has garnered a respectable life list by birding whenever he wasn't working as a union representative or spending time with his family. He lives in Forest Hills with Daisy and Desmond Shearwater. His bird photographs have appeared on the Today Show, in Birding, Living Bird Magazine, Bird Watcher's Digest, and many other fine publications. He is also the author of the American Birding Association Field Guide to the Birds of New York.
One of my favourite poems, not about birds, but about bird watching…
The Bird Watcher by Carl Dennis
Now the coast of the county is grazed by light.
Farmers are rising in America.
Hunters in the North shoulder their guns
And march off into the woods.
The sky is crowded with small birds.
Unnoticed they scatter across fields and towns.
Now in the twilight before work
In his one moment of leisure
The bird watcher steps out of his house
To stand in the street and wait.
If a single stray circles nearby
Or calls from a maze of branches,
Or hovers as a speck far off,
The watcher, with no one nearby to look,
Points up, and with no one to listen
Breaks the silence, sounding out the name