Chard DeNiord

Chard DeNiord Poems

The windows are dressed in feathers where the birds have flown against
them,
then fallen below into the flowers where their bodies lie grounded, still,
...

He lowered his head and darted through
the grass, flushing a hen from off her nest,
then zeroing in on the day-old chicks
...

My sister and I went out to them with sugar
cubes and bridled their heads when they bent down
to eat from our palms. We led them over
...

For Ethan Canin
I sat on the dock at dusk and spoke
to the fish who swam beneath me
...

The nurse calls to tell me on Sunday evenings
how he's doing.
How he's holding his own in front
...

It's not paradise I'm looking for
but the naming I hardly gave a thought to.
Call it the gift I carried in my loneliness
...

The guests are floating in the lobby,
walking but also gliding to the front desk
then away, checking in, checking out,
...

I'd smoke cigars all day and into the night
while I wrote and wrote without
any hope or slightest assurance
...

"All I did was write them down
wherever I was at the time, hanging
laundry, baking bread, driving to Illinois.
...

She breathed a chill that slowed the sap
inside the phloem, stood perfectly still
inside the dark, then walked to a field
...

I still taste you from the time
you painted my tongue
with your scarlet finger.
...

12.

My tongue leapt out of my mouth
when I lied to her and hopped away
to the stream below the house.
...

13.

I gathered with the others
at the pool each morning
to swim my laps, stretch
my arms and fly like a fish
...

14.

The crows were talking in the pines.
How they reveled in rudeness,
half laughing, half crying
...

A blue jay with a haircut
at the feeder turned to look at me.
"Nice hair cut," I said
and he flew away.
...

Chard DeNiord Biography

Chard deNiord is an American author, poet, and teacher. He lives in Westminster West, Vermont with his wife Liz. Chard deNiord is the author of the poetry collections Asleep in the Fire (1990), Sharp Golden Thorn (2003), Night Mowing (2005), The Double Truth (2011), and Interstate (2015). His book Sad Friends, Drowned Lovers, Stapled Songs (2011) is a collection of interviews with American poets, including Robert Bly, Lucille Clifton, Jack Gilbert, Donald Hall, Galway Kinnell, Maxine Kumin, and Vermont Poet Laureate Ruth Stone. DeNiord was born on December 17, 1952, in New Haven, Connecticut. He was raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, where he attended Lynchburg College, earning a BA in religious studies. He later received a Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Currently a professor at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island, deNiord has been a Poetry Fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Allan Collins Scholar in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. In addition, he co-founded the New England College Master of Fine Arts program in poetry. He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and his poems have been included in the anthologies Pushcart Prize XXII (1998), Best American Poetry (1999), Best of the Prose Poem (2000), American Religious Poems (2006), and American Poetry Now (2007). In 2015, DeNiord was named the Vermont State Poet Laureate.)

The Best Poem Of Chard DeNiord

Confession of a Bird Watcher

The windows are dressed in feathers where the birds have flown against
them,
then fallen below into the flowers where their bodies lie grounded, still,
slowly disappearing each day until all that is left are their narrow,
prehensile bones.
I have sat at my window now for years and watched a hundred birds
mistake the glass for air and break their necks, wondering what to do,
how else to live among them and keep my view.
Not to mention the sight of them at the feeder in the morning,
especially the cardinal in snow.
What sign to post on the sill that says, 'Warning, large glass window.
Fatal if struck. Fly around or above but not away.
There are seeds in the feeder and water in the bath.
I need you, which is to say, I'm sorry for my genius as the creature inside
who attracts you with seeds and watches you die against the window
I've built with the knowledge of its danger to you.
With a heart that rejects its reasons in favor of keeping what it wants:
the sight of you, the sight of you.'

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