BIRDS IN WILDFIRE SEASON

by Cecil Morris

Gary Robertson/Flickr Creative Commons

“Birds shouldn’t go outside at all when it's smoky.” 

—NPR, June 8, 2023

1

Birds themselves are particulate matter, visible smudges

clouding blue skies and dangerous if carelessly inhaled,

if respirators are not fitted right—over mouth

and nose—and well sealed against avian infection.

Birds should not be inside at all, smoky or warbling

and tuneful or decorative splashes of color for

monochrome rooms. Birds and their mites and germs and

influenzas should be kept out at all costs. Use bars

and screens and N95 masks cinched tight to guard against

feather lung with its symptoms of chirping and flightiness,

erosion of marrow—so called hollow-bone syndrome

(HBS)—and often fatal light-headedness.

Do not wait for the Surgeon General or CDC

to issue official warnings or for Congress to mandate

cautionary labels on all birds. Birds can kill.

2

Wait. Birds live outside. Birds are outside always,

those complaining jays and crows, the warbling

passerines, the finches, sparrows, the larks.

Birds are the outside—along with round trees

and arrow trees and pollen-spewing weeds.

I mean, they’re nature and nature’s outside.

Are we supposed to bring them inside now?

Can they be quarantined? Locked in their nests

until tongues of flame kiss them into smoke?

Will their tiny bird brains tell them to come

inside, to seek an air-filtered shelter,

to take wing and flee fiery holocaust?

 

Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching high school English and now has turned to writing what he used to teach students to understand and (he hopes) enjoy. He has had a handful of poems published in The Cimarron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Hole in the Head Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Verse News, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

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