In regards to the poem “Dreaming Blackbird” by Brian Michael Tracy

To Brian:

     I took your poem for a walk today. Folded paper in my pocket, we tramped in snow down the hill alongside sagebrush and snowberry bush, junipers and fallen timber. We walked in deer tracks that led to the draw, the draw where, from my house at dusk and in the liminal light of pre-dawn, I can hear the great horned owls ask haunting questions that echo in the night. In the wake of the trail, we found two downy feathers. We stood before a cairn made of bones and stones. As I read, the words of the poem drifted to the tops of the Ponderosa pine trees and floated back down like feathered messengers.

     Climbing out of the draw, we were flanked by pine trees on both sides where, when the snows come wet and heavy, the branches bend to form a tunnel and I can enter the world of Narnia and expect to meet a faun or dryad or follow the rabbit tracks to a winter hut where I am invited in. But today the trees stood tall in the sunlight. Chickadees and red-polls chattered among the branches as I reached inside my pocket and unfolded your poem. The words became birdsong.

     I took your poem to bed with me, so it could meet and mingle with my dreams. In the waning hours of night, just before dawn, I rose in the silence and held your poem in front of the light of my kerosene lamp; the paper and words, lit from behind, were iridescent.

From,  Karen Stevenson