(San Juan Mountains, Colorado)
I like birds brash as I am not, their calls—
audacious as their costumes—rebounding
through crisp box canyon air from icy walls,
proclaiming their presence like actors sounding
soliloquies in theaters of snow.
Neither the Steller’s Jay nor Whiskey Jack
pauses for approval, magpies don’t know
the sting of self-doubt, ravens—robed in black—
croak sentences like courtroom magistrates.
It’s not their rudeness I envy, but how
their boundless self-assurance animates
the whole community of creatures now
present—including me—so that we share
a knowledge not of who we are but where.
–
Brian Volck is a pediatrician who lives in Baltimore. He has published one volume of poetry, Flesh Becomes Word, and a memoir, Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words.