OWNING BIRDS

Knowing birds
is like owning them at a distance.
Visiting Newfoundland
I put a check mark next to Kittiwake
in the Life List I found
sixty years ago
in Peterson’s Field Guide.

Some compete, compare their lists.
Some venture out on Christmas Day
for the annual census, regardless
of weather. When I was in college
a group of us—wearing
broad-brimmed hats for protection—
trod Long Beach Island to count tern nests,
little hollows in the sand where the eggs
sat exposed, while the outraged terns
dive-bombed and shat on us from above.

I’ve kept adding check marks ever since,
as though I still didn’t have
enough friends.

Steve Nickman’s poetry collection, To Sleep with Bears, is now available from Wordtech (2022). He is a psychiatrist who works mainly with kids, teenagers and young adults. He has a strong interest in the experiences and dilemmas of adoptees and their families, and is working on a book about therapy, The Wound and the Spark. Steve’s poetry has recently appeared in Pleiades, Nimrod, Summerset Review, Tar River Review, Tule Review, and JuxtaProse. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts and is a member of Poemworks: The Workshop for Publishing Poets.