What the Birds Know - Maya Khosla

[Larry Robinson]

What the Birds Know
			
once we have looked away 
once we have mourned 
and banished all smoldering thoughts
about the tribe of blackened trees
replacing the known world 
for now and another season 
and the last long fingers of smoke
have been ushered out by wind
a ticking begins
no one has seen them arrive in such numbers
the birds are neither lost nor passing through
they are simply linked tight 
to the lingering scents 
the promise of white fruits
protein concealed by bark
so were the ways of ancestors
who began their journeys
as specks in the distance 
some fifty thousand years ago
riding miles of smoky gold
along a known line of hunger
growing closer and closer
the black beat of instinct 
working a migration upstream
against the flow of smoke
into the source and its multiple riches 
one preens its dusk-and-opal plumage
others tap like a knock on the door 
whose answer is advice provided 
by the ages 
long as genetic fibers coiled 
in every cell beak and bone
muscle and shiny eye
the birds are awake to the growth 
and abundance soon to follow 
with the diligence 
of all known colors unfurling 
from the soil’s chocolatey darkness
from the trees re-greening come spring 
from the blackness

	- Maya Khosla
	(Maya Khosla is Sonoma County’s Poet Laureate)