Bird-Song

Since the Wisdom School in Minnesota at the House of Prayer this summer and David Stringer's excellent work with the modern prophetic voices of Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry, I have been reading and rereading these two contemporary poets. I was struck by the insight into the modern, urban world that Wendell Berry brings in this particular piece that speaks to all of nature speaking to us through its voices and songs.

In the empty lot--a place
not natural, but wild--among
the trash of human absence,

the slough and shamble
of city's seasons, a few
old locusts bloom.

A few wood birds
fly and sing
in the new foliage
--warblers and tanagers, birds
wild as leaves; in a million
each one would be rare,

new to the eyes. A man
couldn't make a habit
of such color,

such flight and singing.
But they're the habit of this
wasted place. In them

the ground is wise. they are
its remembrance of what it is.
--Wendell Berry's "The Wild"