Not My Favorite Bird, But A Favorite Poet

 

Starlings don't stay around here in the winter, thank goodness. I get upset enough with them during the other seasons, especially when they go after the suet and eat it all in one day. 

But when I searched to see if one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, had a poem about winter this is the one that I found.....

                                     Starlings In Winter (By Mary Oliver)

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

The poem says it is about grief and of getting past it. It may be grief for the loss of a loved one, but I read it as lamenting the loss of one's own youth and the mobility therein - something I can relate to. Regardless, her poems are ones I can read over and over again and who knows, maybe I begin tolerating starlings if I read this one often enough.