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SOME EMPTY SKY
This was the year the birds didn’t come, not even in the blizzard, snow falling five inches per hour, nearly three feet, turning the landscape white, white, white. Years ago, crows would swoop down, sleek as beef cattle, as soon as I opened the back door, zooming in on the salmon skins, globs of chicken fat, hunks of gristle; punctuating the air with their harsh caws. This year, the scraps just sit there. Before, the cherry tree was full of cardinals, olive-green and blood-red, dramatic against the snow. This year, absence. Fox, hawk, climate change, who knows? And many years back, whole flocks of evening grosbeaks: stoplight yellow, black-and--white wings, spectacular birds. You could stand for hours watching them at the feeder. My friend Henry and I would be on the phone, talking about poetry, as the snow came down, line after line. Have you seen any grosbeaks? he’d ask. And I’d tell him how many. Now the birds are gone, and his mind has flown. We go out to lunch, but he can’t remember what he’s ordered, or what kind of beer he likes. This is not migration’s normal path. He wanders through his house, clutching a yellow pencil, not sure what to do with it, but absolutely certain it is necessary. ~Barbara Crooker |
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