Poems After John James Audubon, by Colin Morris

Carolina Parakeet, by John James Audubon (USA, b. Haiti) 1825-1833

Sighting                 

Seven obsolete forms
intersect

in leaf-work, stretched 
quick 

at barbed fruit. 

Lemon-carmine throats    
tremor, wings pulse

shutter-green. Saturation   
resists the blank 

pull.  

A tree-limb rips open 
the face 

of the page – the paper 
reserves 

press in. 

The lowermost looks 
out (as if to 

fly) to you. 

It’s what’s missing    
prints increase    

in the eye, calls 
for entry.   

Loggerhead Shrike, by John James Audubon (USA, b.Haiti) 1812

A Part of the Face
J.J. Audubon, 1820

He wished to admit the productions 
of nature. He wished to see life in them 
fresh, their faultless forms. He wished to 
copy them in their own way, alive and 
moving, alighted or on the ground. The 
bird’s very tongue was important to him. 

He laid his dead species on floors, then 
tables and cloth-covered chairs. Neither 
wing, nor leg, nor tail could he place in 
attitudes according to his wishes. An eye 
flashed white when he pushed the lids 
aside with a finger. 

He dreamed he pierced a carcass to fix 
it on his board, passed a wire through the 
mandible to pulley up the head, with finer 
lines affixed the feet, outlined, coloured and 
finished the likeness without thought 
or hunger. A part of the face was injured 
by a drop of water that dried where it 
fell. He applied soft cork to restore the 
desired effect, but the shadowy fissure 
remains. Worn opening – ragged blur – 
a limitless limit to sight.

Puffin, by John James Audubon (USA, b. Haiti) 1833

The Lateness of the Season 
Audubon’s Labrador Expedition

It was so cold that it was painful 
to draw the whole day, yet I drew
a White-winged Crossbill and 
a Puffin. We have had three 
of the latter on board, alive, these 
three days past.  It amuses us to see 
them running about the hold with a 
surprising quickness, watching our 
motions, and especially our eyes.  
​                                       
*

I cannot describe it; all I can say is that 
so strong does the wind blow, and so great its 
influence on our vessel, that her motion will not allow 
me to draw. The rain is driven in sheets which seem scarcely 
to fall on sea or on land; I can hardly call it rain; it is rather a mass 
of water so thick that all objects at any distance are lost to sight, and the waters 
comb up and beat about us as a newly caged bird does against its imprisoning walls. 

*

I am much fatigued and wet to the skin, but 
we found the nest of a Peregrine Falcon on a 
tremendous cliff, with a young one a week old, 
quite white with down. 

The parents flew fiercely at our eyes. 
                        
*

I had three Foolish Guillemots thrown 
overboard alive to observe their actions. 
Two fluttered on top of the water for 
twenty yards or so, then dove, and didn’t 
rise again for fully a hundred yards from 
the ship. The third went in head-
foremost, like a man diving, and swam 
under the surface so smoothly and fast 
that it looked like a fish with wings. 

*

We shot a Ruby-crowned Wren. It sang for a long time 
before it was shot and perched on the tops of the firs, 
removing from one to another as our party came 
close. So strange, so beautiful was the song 
that I pronounced the singer a new type
of Warbler. John shot it. It fell to the 
ground, and John found it and 
brought it to me. I draw this 
musician tomorrow.                           

*

The peculiar cast of the sky, which never seems 
to be certain. 

Butterflies flitting over snow banks.    

*

I tried to finish my drawing. I covered 
my paper to protect it from the rain, with 
the exception of the few inches where 
I wished to work, yet that small space 
was not spared.
                    
*

When missed by the shot, 
the Piping Plover rises almost 
perpendicularly, passing quite
entirely out of sight.

​

Red Flamingo, by John James Audubon (USA, b. Haiti) 1832

A Flock of Flamingoes
Lucy Bakewell Audubon 

Of what avail to see more 
or less of Florida?  

Mr. Brand declines 
to acknowledge your Eagle 
or my letter. I have no place 
to meet you at. 

Why do you go on 
in vacant precincts?  I am anxious 
to see this excursion ended 
and ourselves once more 
living in ourselves. 

If I could come, I would give you 
myself. 

Your volume calls 
for the birds of America 
yet you enlarge it into 
an endless pursuit.          

Where there are no new 
birds, why remain?    


​

Fish-Hawk Carrying Weak-Fish, by John James Audubon (USA, b. Haiti) 1838

Taking Care of Surfaces  

The fish-eye gapes 
blind, the bird 
glares bloody shot 
as their mouths 
gasp the same swath 
of white 
in the translucid field 
of the Plate. 

Kingfisher, by John James Audubon (USA, b. Haiti) 1830s

A Well-Known Object     
Audubon’s Kingfisher

The pleasure of possession lies        
depleted on the ground.  Spare heat                 

dies in my palm.  I pierce the deep   
breast on a board, thread wire 

to raise the rundown head.  A pin 
to the tail sets halcyon aloft

and red and blue blaze from three 
dimensions to two.  I push the lids 

aside – new colours gush the eye 
as if to promise seven days of calm 

and build a nest of fish bones   
that floats on the sea. 

Colin Morris

Colin Morris was born and raised on the Lancashire coast of England, and lives in south Berkshire County, Massachusetts.  His poems on Audubon have also appeared in Lily Poetry Review and descant.   ​