Bird Language Poem by gershon hepner

Birds are the language spoken by
the sky
the land
can’t even try to understand.

Jonathan Rosen (“Bird-watching and the Jewish Question, ” Jewish Journal, March 28,2008) writes about Jewish bird-watchers, pointing out that Abraham Cahan, the creator of the Yiddish Forverets, was a bird-watcher. In 1903, while Jews were being massacred in Kishinev, Cahan went off bird-watching in Connecticut, but rushed back, binoculars and bird guide in hand, because he “wanted to be with other Jews”. Birds, says, Rosen, are the language spoken by the land itself, though D. H. Lawrence wrote: “Birds are the life of the skies, and when they fly they reveal the thoughts of the skies.”

4/2/08