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WHIP-POOR-WILL
As the last light
of June withdraws
the whip-poor-will sings
his clear brief notes
by the darkening house, then
rises abruptly from sandy
ground, a brown bird
in the near-night, soaring
over shed and woodshed
to far dark fields. When
he returns at dawn,
in my sleep I hear
his three syllables make
a man's name, who slept
fifty years in this bed
and ploughed these fields:
_WES-LEY-WELLS_ . . . _WES-LEY-WELLS_ . . .
It is good
to wake early in high
summer with work to do,
and look out the window
at a ghost bird lifting away
to drowse all morning
in his grassy hut.
Donald Hall
Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.
~ Alma Gluck
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A bird's feathers weigh more than its skeleton does.
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