Each afternoon, as I pass the field
on my way down our long, dirt drive
to get the mail—my outing between hours
at the desk—the killdeer drags her wing
along the ground, pretending it’s broken,
leading me away from the nest she
and her mate breast-scraped in pebbles
and weeds.
Sixty years pass between one
breath and the next, and I’m in the garden
at Wild Run Farm, watching my parents
plant corn, beans, tomatoes, peas. I hold
The Golden Guide open to the picture
of a tawny bird with a black and white
mask, filled with wonder at what it means
to identify a living being for the first time,
knowledge I’ll store up the rest of my life.
Meanwhile, clouds
scud past the souls of both my parents.
There’s a dirt-stained finger print on the page—
mine or theirs? The killdeer swoops
through me on slender wings, her high,
plaintive cry leading me away
from her speckled eggs. I have a whole
shelf of field guides about birds now
that might give me more answers.
But only this one opens the book we call time.
—
Alison Townsend is author of The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home; two books of poetry, Persephone in America and The Blue Dress; and a prose chapbook, The Persistence of Rivers. Her work s appears in journals such as Blackbird, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, Parabola, and Under the Sun, and has been recognized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays 2020. She is Professor Emerita at UW-Whitewater.
