There are far too many
birdless days,
or those days nearly so.
I fall into an absent stupor
not sure where to turn.
It’s as if some feather requisited rapture
came to whisk away all things bird.
Because they are good
and worthy of being heaven bound,
or saved just because they are
what (and who) they are.
When the wrens fall quiet
and the cardinals too,
there is an absence that takes hold,
and it is in these voids,
when the sky empties of soaring hawks
when the lawn empties of robins
when the sunflower seeds sit untouched
when the vireos cease to sing,
when not a single thrush sneaks
when the warblers cease to be,
I ask myself,
if it might be time too,
for me to leave.
—
J. Drew Lanham is a wildlife ecologist at Clemson University and a writer/poet. He is the author of The Home Place – Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed, 2016), Sparrow Envy – Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts and Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves (Hub City, 2021 and 2024). His work on conserving wildness and illuminating social condition by personal identity can be found online. He is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow and lives on a farm in Seneca, South Carolina cultivating words and nurtures wildness.
