Five Poems and Artworks on Birds, by Barbara Lydecker Crane

The Common Regret, by Barbara Lydecker Crane (USA) contemporary

The Common Regret

Their colour is blush, and their prominent trait
is their ploddingly slow, bent-over gait,
as if in constant rueful state.

Regrets forget their weather eye,
get caught in squalls. Sometimes they fly
south in summer, where they fry.

Confusing parenthood with play,
on roller coasters Regrets lay
their eggs, which very seldom stay.

They can’t fly straight; they simply swirl. 
They doze, mid-air, with feathers furled.
Regrets are rueful round the world.

Barn Swallower, by Barbara Lydecker Crane (USA) contemporary

Barn Swallower

Swallower flocks divide in teams
and feast on rotting boards and beams;
old country barns will soon be dreams.
  
All those chips of barn red paint
on which they munch without restraint
give undersides a ruddy taint.

These birds can’t help ingesting nails
which over time elongate tails,
especially those of Swallower males.

They migrate with their next of kin,
Bank Swallowers, who bite in-
to fiscal structures wearing thin.

Scarlet Manager, by Barbara Lydecker Crane (USA) contemporary

​Scarlet Manager

Bossy, breeding Manager males
jerk their jet black wings and tails
and their red bodies, pointing trails

from vantage points on limbs and wires.
They’re self-appointed specifiers
of migratory lines for flyers.

A Scarlet Manager’s buzzed Chick-burr
will roughly mean, “You must concur.” 
A Chip-churee: “Of course I’m sure!”

From lofty perches, they eat fruit,
insects (any kind will suit)
and sometimes, lagging wrens en route.

Knotty Tern, by Barbara Lydecker Crane (USA) contemporary

Knotty Tern

The only tern with knotted neck,
the Knotty makes one double-check.
Ornithologists have spec-

ulated that in Knottys’ goal
of migrating from pole to pole,
the howling west wind took its toll:

surviving fledglings grew up learning
to follow flocks in circular turning.
All that constant, looping, churning

has twisted necks since time forgot.
In little bites, they eat a lot.
They mate for life—a one-shot knot.

Parrocan, by Barbara Lydecker Crane (USA) contemporary

Parrocan

Found along the southern coast,
this hybrid parrot is a close
kin to pelican. Verbose,

it mimics jeers at campaign speeches,
car alarms, sirens, screeches,
blaring radios on beaches.

It feeds on trash. Its favorite bit
is fish-on-crackers, to befit
the Parrocan’s genetic split.

In courting phase, the eager males
will offer females fishy tails
displayed in bills of sliding scales.

Barbara Lydecker Crane

Barbara Lydecker Crane was a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist in 2017 and  2019.  Her fourth collection, You Will Remember Me, sonnets in the imagined voices of artists through history, with many colour reproductions, will be published in October 2023 by Able Muse Press.