Saturday, May 24, 2014

FOOTNOTE TO THE UNOFFICIAL BEGINNING OF SUMMER

by Howie Good


Image source: Crane Lake Nature Blog

Poem inspired by “Black-Throated Blue Warbler: Listen, Stop and Watch” by Dave Taft, NY Times “City Room” Blog, May 16, 2014


You don’t
need to call
yourself
a bird-
watcher

Anyone
can take
a cue from
the black-
throated blue
that last
night’s winds
blew in

This wasn’t
something
I’d experienced
before –

new leaves
and buds
and a buzz
that sounded
maybe not
to others
but to me
just like
“I’m-so-lay-zee!”


Howie Good, a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of the 2013 chapbooks Echo's Bones and Danger Falling Debris, both from Red Bird Chapbooks. He co-edits White Knuckle Press with Dale Wisely.