To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.
Please enjoy today’s selection: “Following Leonard Cohen’s Lead” by Karla Linn Merrifield, which appears in Poeming Pigeons: Poems about Birds:
Following Leonard Cohen’s Lead
~ for Roger M. Weir
with a line from “Come Healing” (2012)
Hallelujah owl — the great horned who-bird
of Everglades pines, magisterial, mythical
by Equinox Eve half-moon, come
to gather up our brokenness on silent wings.
Hallelujah black-necked stilt
skating spring Equinox shallows,
score of more on skinny legs come
to gather up our brokenness, banish the hunger.
Hallelujah storks, hallelujah spoonbills —
woodies and pinkos of Parotis Pond’s
rookeries, dozens abuzz as if come
to gather up our brokenness with procreation.
Hallelujah, birds — we fly, we feed, we breed
the wild, our imagination made entire.
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