by Erin Murphy
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| Scientists Still Searching for the Pathogen Behind the East's Songbird Epidemic: In a new report, experts ruled out a range of causes, but they still recommend taking down feeders until the source of the disease is identified. —Audubon, July 8, 2021. Photo: A young Blue Jay admitted to the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Virginia with an unknown illness. Credit: Blue Ridge Wildlife Center via Audubon. |
Songbirds stumble,
crusty eyes gunked shut
with conjunctivitis.
Out of an abundance
of caution, we remove
feeders where they cluster
like us to cluck about
the latest scuttlebutt.
Hands gloved, we dump
the double-bagged dead,
muttering that it’s redundant.
We who have too much
do not fund hungry children
but grumble when unable
to fuss over cardinals
in lush gardens. We suffer
from an abundance
of abundance.
Erin Murphy’s latest book, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Diode, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Georgia Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. Her awards include the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, The Normal School Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award. She is Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review and Professor of English at Penn State Altoona.