The birds,
who I am still just
beginning to know,
despite my sixty-five years,
despite my inability
to call them out by name–
they’ve been singing
continuously
and with vigor
all through this morning,
which they will do
even when I am not sitting
as I do today,
beneath this rustling
canopy of aspen
fir and pine
upon the mountainside
they frequent.
I want to remember their songs
but I cannot sing them.
Just as I long to extract
and carry back
the redolence of every breath
beneath these trees.
But I cannot
create
what has already
been created.
Cannot make a world
out of memories
of wondrous things.
Poem by Paula Brown
Paula Brown is a poet and a writer who retired from the medical field and went on to become a perennial student of the Writers Studio in Tucson, Arizona. Her work has been published in the Adirondack Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Whitefish Review, South Dakota Magazine, War, Literature, and the Arts, and the Phoenix Soul. She lives in Tucson with her husband and six dachshunds.