When we first moved to Virginia we let the grass grow tall in front of the house. I remember wondering if we had a new kind of thistle that was yellow. Then I realized it was goldfinches perched on each purple flower head. Yesterday morning I walked the dog down to the end of a nearby gravel road. At the road’s end with its circular turn around, all I could hear were blue jays, robins, and crows. The birds had flown up into the tops of the bare branches of the willows, persimmons, and dogwoods. When I think back to growing up in New York City roller skating in Central Park I never imagined that poetry would be part of how I understand the world.
It’s the Season I Often Mistake
Birds for leaves, and leaves for birds.
The tawny yellow mulberry leaves
are always goldfinches tumbling
across the lawn like extreme elation.
The last of the maroon crabapple
ovates are song sparrows that tremble
all at once. And today, just when I
could not stand myself any longer,
a group of field sparrows, that were
actually field sparrows, flew up into
the bare branches of the hackberry
and I almost collapsed: leaves
reattaching themselves to the tree
like a strong spell for reversal. What
else did I expect? What good
is accuracy amidst the perpetual
scattering that unspools the world.
–Ada Limón, from The Hurting Kind, Milkweed Editions