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.

---