Gary McDowell ​
​

WE ARE GATHERED HERE TODAY

Birds with inky wings, birds with long
necks, birds are my body are rain are
 
a scatter. A friend scolds me: birds?
Could you, he says, be more specific?
 
I could. I could play to the angle
of solitude, but as far as metaphors go:
 
Consider the leaves on the branches,
each both an entrance and an exit.
 
I learned a long time ago that prayers
go unanswered. In the moonlight,
 
the moonlight is everything—set that aside,
lean in closely, there’s something you
 
need to know: We are named for want
of lack. Cardinal, swift, flicker, phoebe,
 
vireo, wren. We are who we say we are,
we are our own angels. What you call intent,
 
I call forlorn. Atop the sugar maple,
a warbler I can hear but cannot see,
 
and just like that I am become, I am
little wonder, voiceless and in awe.

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Gary McDowell is the author/editor of eight books including, most recently, Aflame (White Pine Press, 2020) and Caesura: Essays (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Nation, The Southern Review, The Laurel Review, Heavy Feather Review, and West Branch, among others. He is Professor of English at Belmont University and lives with his family in Murfreesboro, TN.