Poetry Magazine
Bird Left Behind
As for her, the circumstances must be ordinary
And so the return. Door unlocked. The path mowed
Right to the oiled gate; the pasture
Cleared of stone and alder. All untouched
Enough to enter. The man or woman
Off down the valley or working above
Treeline. No other sound but a few strays
Hurrying through the dusk as if the end
Will begin, certain and with nothing
More to say. She does not know she does not know.
Having come back to find her kind
And none being left she took herself up
Into a tree unclear what to do next save only
Sing the song she wanted sung back to her.
Source: Poetry (May 2011).
Biography
Raised on a small New England farm, poet Sophie Cabot Black received a BA from Marlboro College and an MFA from Columbia University. Black’s collections of poetry include The Misunderstanding of Nature (1994), which won the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, and The Descent (2004), which won the Connecticut Book Award. Black’s lyrical poems are both revelatory and elusive, exploring a landscape sharpened . . .
Poems by Sophie Cabot Black
Poem Categorization
POET’S REGION U.S., New England
Poetic Terms Free Verse
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