radar image of migrating birds
Twenty years ago, when meteorologists saw this phenomenon on their radar, when there wasn't any precipitation, they called it "scattered showers in a clear sky." They eventually found out that what they were seeing were migrating birds! When I read this little factoid, the title just grabbed me, and I wrote this poem:
Scattered
Showers in a Clear Sky
What
else looks different from far ?
What
you expect it to be
it
is not.
Four
in the morning,
Flurry
on the radar screen.
How
many miles away
In
the upper atmosphere?
We
need another name for that direction.
North
is different on a map.
It
looks like
Scattered
showers in a clear sky,
and
so the meteorologist calls them.
How
did they finally discover
that
dust on the radar was
a
wide band of warblers,
storm of black-throated blues,
tornado of
tanagers,
powder
of parulas,
blizzard
of buntings?
Prothonotaries
enter a preliminary statement
across
the night sky.
Redstarts
rush down to the new trees.
We
need another name for that direction.
North
is different on a map.
It became the title of my second book, published by Plain View Press in 2007.
I still love the thought of those clouds of birds flying by night, showing up on the radar.
It's March now, and some of them will be starting on their journey back to north and nesting season.
logo from New River Birding Festival... art by Julie Zickefoose
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