I have never seen a dying bird. Plenty of dead ones, mind, but never one at the very moment. Small mercies, I used to believe. That was before today’s poem came across my way, opening my eyes to the connection a small act of compassion can establish.

Or perhaps simply an act of seeing. Linda Hogan, the poet I chose for today, a member of the Chikasaw nation, and a volunteer and consultant for wildlife rehabilitation and endangered species programs, reminds us: “Between the human and all the rest / lies only an eyelid.”

(And before you worry, all images today are birds so very much alive.)

Hogan, author of several poetry collections, has published essays for the Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club, her honors and awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Henry David Thoreau Prize for Nature Writing, a Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her fiction was listed for the Pulitzer.

If you want to give yourself a gift or simply a lasting distraction from the current abysmal news, check out her volume Rounding the Human Corners. Barbara Kingsolver said:“Linda Hogan’s vision is breathtaking.” Who am I to argue.

The Heron

Linda Hogan

Herons are most elegant, until they open their beak – out comes the screechiest croak. it always makes me laugh. Music, then, shall be something to make us at least smile, if not laugh. I am thinking of Ligeti –

and this fun little Beethoven parody: