GAS Featured Poet: Howie Good

 

Howie Good, Ph.D., a journalism professor at SUNY New Paltz, is the author of Gunmetal Sky, a poetry collection forthcoming from Thirty West Publishing.

Birds of New England

There’s scarcely a tree remaining in the area for a bird to sit quietly on and think. This is someone’s idea of progress. It’s just not mine.

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I bought a book a couple of weeks ago at Costco called Birds of New England. It contains drawings of different kinds of birds – you know, wading birds, songbirds, migratory birds – and brief descriptions of their habits. What’s that screechy brown bird that wants to monopolize our feeder? I look from bird to book to bird to book to bird, only to finally realize just how hopeless this is, like trying to identify a 70-year-old from his first-grade class picture.

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At a stoplight on Mass Ave., a panhandler in a New England Patriots jersey with a rip in the shoulder shuffled up to my car. He had eyes like peeling mirrors and a knobby nose that had obviously been broken more than once. I didn’t lower my window. I didn’t acknowledge him. I just stared straight ahead, willing the light to change. This is how the future creeps into the present. 

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Almost a year ago now, I was sent home from the hospital just hours after surgery. The only instructions I can remember being given was to look for the tall weed whose milky white sap is said to relieve pain. And if I had to scream, to please scream silently.