Turning birds into words

I’m holding in my hand a small chapbook by James Brush called a gnarled oak. This chapbook is a very limited edition. James published a few copies himself to give as gifts and I snagged a copy by the time-honored ploy of asking for one.

It’s a classy looking little book, just plain white paper but with some of the sharpest black and white photos I’ve seen. They’re almost pellucid in their use of light — and the same adjective could be used to describe the micropoems in this chapbook.

These poems are from James’s micropoetry blog a gnarled oak, “where birds turn into words.” I love that subtitle. The poems are cross-posted at identi.ca, where I “met” James.

a gnarled oak includes four seasons of poems that James wrote as a daily meditation on what he observed walking neighborhood trails in and around Austin. James says:

My favorite neighborhood trail follows a north-running stream down to a pond. There are ducks in winter, herons in summer, and songbirds year-round. Besides birds, I’ve watched snakes, deer, rabbits, turtles, and butterflies going about their business. There’s also a Red-shouldered Hawk who likes to pose but doesn’t want his picture taken.

In January, I started doing weekly counts to see what birds we have and when they’re around. As of now, I’ve recorded almost sixty species. In addition to birding, I wrote haiku and haiku-like poems to add substance to my observations and also as a way of focusing and paying closer — deeper — attention to the wild lives going on all around.

The result is a gift to us all, because — though the chapbook a gnarled oak is a very limited edition — the micropoetry blog a gnarled oak is there for us all to read.

Hard to excerpt micropoems, so I’ll just give you the full text of one of my favorites and hope I have James’s blessing:

Goldfinches and sparrows
hold still as statues;
A falcon has stopped time.

James also blogs and posts longer poems at Coyote Mercury. He has self-published his novel, A Place Without a Postcard He writes about the decision to self-publish here.