MIGRATION OF BIRDS
            Gary Snyder
                c. 1956
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It started just now with a hummingbird
Hovering over the porch two yards away
                            then gone,
It stopped me studying.
I saw the redwood post
Leaning in clod ground
Tangled in a bush of yellow flowers
Higher than my head, through which we push
Every time we come inside--
The shadow network of the sunshine
Through its vines.  White-crowned sparrows
Make tremendous singings in the trees
The rooster down the valley crows and crows.
Jack Kerouac outside, behind my back
Reads the _Diamond_Sutra_ in the sun.
Yesterday I read _Migration_of_Birds;
The Golden Plover and the Arctic Tern.
Today that big abstraction's at our door
For juncoes and the robins all have left,
Broody scrabblers pick up bits of sting
And in this hazy day
Of April summer heat
Across the hill the seabirds
Chase Spring north along the coast:
Nesting in Alaska
In six weeks.


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** contributory thanks to Sam Droege **

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