Poems by Lois Levinson
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A Hole in the Sky
The disappearance of 2.9 billion birds over the past nearly 50 years
was reported today in the journal Science...
The New York Times, 19 September 2019
by Lois Levinson
From Canary Fall 2020
Lois lives at 5,600 feet at the western edge of the Great Plains and in view of the front range of the Rocky Mountains. She loves to wander in riparian and montane habitats in search of birds.
How many days would it take
for three billion birds to pass overhead,
an unending procession on a flight to oblivion?
While we were busy
making a living,
making dinner,
making a point,
we squandered our inheritance of birds.
John James Audubon saw passenger pigeons
in the millions, flocks passing for days,
blotting out the sun, like an eclipse.
But we know how that story ends.
Do you remember, when we were children,
watching long formations of birds traverse the sky?
Red-winged blackbirds, song sparrows, blue jays –
we couldn't imagine they'd ever disappear.
We cut down their nest trees,
paved over their food supply,
planted flowers of no use to them.
Did we think they'd adapt?
Three billion birds vanished on our watch,
leaving an enormous hole in the sky.
One in four gone,
like canaries of the coming collapse.
© Lois Levinson
Owl Delusion
by Lois Levinson
There's a barn owl
perched high in a tattered
cottonwood near the lake,
a stately white bird with
a heart-shaped face
and enormous dark eyes,
still as a marble statue.
I study the image in my scope,
offer a look to passers-by,
but none of them can see the owl.
The bird doesn't move a feather.
He doesn't blink.
I'm not sure he's breathing.
The thrill of finding the raptor
begins to dissipate
in a downdraft of doubt.
What if it's not an owl,
but an apparition
made from peeled bark,
desiccated leaves,
reflected sunlight,
and angst?
Why not a large white bird–
a phantom,
a portent,
a sign of hope
in this wretched time?
An owlish shape
made out of light, shadow
and need,
an illusory joy,
this owl
that is not,
strictly speaking,
there.
© Lois Levinson
Succession
by Lois Levinson
From Canary Fall 2021
After the hurricane,
after the flood,
they tore down
the house
where I grew up,
leveled all
the ruined houses
and proclaimed
the empty lots
a park.
Now thick woods thrive
where my house
once stood,
with an understory
of saplings, vines,
dogwood and clover,
perfect habitat
for the finches
and cardinals
who've taken up
residence
at my old address,
as though waves
of destruction
and rebirth
had scoured away
the footprints
of my childhood,
as if home was just
a borrowed thing,
the forest
biding its time,
waiting
to take it back.
© Lois Levinson
Sunrise, San Luis Valley
by Lois Levinson
From Canary Spring 2021
Sandhill cranes rise
in flocks from the waters
of their nighttime roosts,
trilling urgent conversations
as they pass overhead
in skeins that etch
a fine script across
the fresh page of dawn sky.
The sun emerges from its early
morning climb up Blanca Peak,
as the paling full moon slips
behind the San Juan Range.
Between sun and moon,
only the wingbeats of cranes.
© Lois Levinson
While You Were Sleeping
by Lois Levinson
From Canary Fall 2021
The cut scar
on the old maple
has ruptured
in an effusion
of mushroom conks
multiple layers
of fattened fungus
the size of a
basketball
extruded
from the heart
of the tree
a cry of terror
propelled
to the surface
a frantic warning
of a fermenting
scourge
a vile fizzing
effervescing
beneath
a metastasizing
malevolence
its insidious
tentacles
clawing
upward.
© Lois Levinson