"Invisible Visitors" by David Budbill

                                                   All through August and September
                                                            thousands, maybe
                                                   tens of thousands, of feathered
                                                            creatures pass through
                                                   this place and I almost never see
                                                            a single one. The fall
                                                   wood warbler migration goes by here
                                                            every year, all of them,
                                                  myriad species, all looking sort of like
                                                            each other, yellow, brown, gray,
                                                  all muted versions of their summer selves,
                                                            almost indistinguishable
                                                  from each other, at least to me, although
                                                            definitely not to each other, 
                                                  all flying by, mostly at night, calling to each
                                                            other as they go to keep
                                                  the flock together, saying: chip, zeet,
                                                            buzz, smack, zip, squeak—
                                                            those
                                                  sounds reassuring that we are
                                                            all here together and
                                                  heading south, all of us just passing
                                                            through, just passing
                                                  through, just passing through, just
                                                            passing through.

"The Woodcutter Changes His Mind" by David Budbill

The Woodcutter, Winslow Homer, 1891

When I was young, I cut the bigger, older trees for firewood, the ones

with heart rot, dead and broken branches, the crippled and deformed

ones, because, I reasoned, they were going to fall soon anyway, and

therefore, I should give the younger trees more light and room to grow.

Now I’m older and I cut the younger, strong and sturdy, solid

and beautiful trees, and I let the older ones have a few more years

of light and water and leaf in the forest they have known so long.

Soon enough they will be prostrate on the ground.

"The Woodcutter Changes His Mind" by David Budbill from While We've Still Got Feet. © Copper Canyon Press, 2005.