Leaning over the newspaper
this morning, reading a piece by a local
writer on spring, I was startled to find
a reference to a poem, the one
about blackbirds. Just two lines
pulled from the poem’s long, lyrical list,

The river is moving
The blackbird must be flying

missing the rhythmic connections
one makes while reading the thirteen ways
of looking, missing too, you might say,
the underlying impact, and yet,
I can see him at his desk, googling
 “blackbirds” looking out the window
of the bright newsroom, down
on the narrow, winding river
with its scrawny willows, listening
for the clean, thin whistle of the redwing.





Mary Wehner is the author of …or the opposite, a letterpress chapbook edition by Red Hydra Press in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.   Her poems have appeared in Southern Indiana Review, Red River Review, Wisconsin Trails,  and other literary publications. Her poem “Broken Shells at Dusk” was published as a lithograph in collaboration with Cuban artist Polyanna Fern�ndez Fern�ndez.   She is a founding member of The Foot of the Lake Poetry Collective.