POEM OF THE MONTH
January
Beginnings
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Pelicans by Janet Turner (1951)
At the Bird Rehab Facility in Vermont
The songbirds are declining
like credit cards. The woman
stating facts in the aviary
reminds me that mourning
doves make milk, secreting
the liquid from their throats
for their young. The cardinal
mom divebombs us twice,
then returns to nest building
like nothing happened, but
my heart is still flinching fast.
The barn owl’s face looks
wood-carved, like we could
chop down an oak and find
this face among the rings.
Her name is St. Louis. All
of the birds here are named
for their places of origin.
The red-tailed hawk is 26-
years-old. I don’t remember
his name, where he’s from—
but I smile when I realize
that in this place, I am
Phoenix, also bird, and as
all the birds here know,
we’re never just the same
when we put our hollow
bones together again, but
who ever said we wanted
to rise back up unchanged.
Katie Manning is a poet, professor, and parent, but not necessarily in that order. She's the founding editor of Whale Road Review and the author of eight poetry collections, including Tasty Other, which won the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her writing has been featured on Poetry Unbound, Tangle News, Verse Daily, and many other venues.
Two summers ago, I went to Poet Camp, a week-long gathering hosted by Sarah Ann Winn. We read Emily Dickinson, visited sites related to her, wrote a lot, drank so much tea, and played Ransom Notes each evening. It was heavenly. One of the places we visited was VINS Nature Center, and this is one of those rare poems that I started drafting immediately after the experience. (In bread terms, my poems usually have a longer rising time!) During the act of drafting, I had no idea where this poem was going, and it kept surprising me. Now it’s become a poem that I think of often, and the last lines especially feel like a pep talk from my past self.
We received over 800 poems for this month’s theme — Beginning — a record number of submissions, and Katie Manning’s “At the Bird Rehab Facility in Vermont” rose quickly to the top. I love how the poem moves through fact and feeling with confidence. Mourning doves make milk. Birds are named for where they came from. A cardinal divebombs, then goes back to building. These details accumulate gently, and then — almost without warning — the poem turns toward the self: “In this place, I am / Phoenix”. I love a poem that surprises itself. Katie wrote in her contributor’s note that she had no idea where this one was heading while drafting it, and you can feel that openness in the lines. The ending—“who ever said we wanted / to rise back up unchanged”—isn’t really a question, is it? Beginning again doesn’t mean returning to who we were. The speaker rises altered, attentive, aware that repair changes us.
