[Each morning before dawn,]
Each morning before dawn, a woodpecker and a scold of jays fight over the feeder, screaming and screeching like demons. Over the course of the day, other birds call out: the spotted towhee, the robin and finch, and the siskin with its pitiful, one-note squeal. At dusk, the mourning dove’s breathy melody echoes through the canyon. It’s enough to break your heart, this tune I can imagine being played on a flute carved from bone.
Copyright © 2026 by Gary Young. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 13, 2026, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I have lived for nearly half a century in a house that I built in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and bird song is the soundtrack to life in the woods. Different birds sing at particular times of day, and in particular seasons. Some bird songs are harsh, others melodic, but none is more haunting to me than the dove’s. I’m not the first person to feel this. Flutes made from hollow bird bones have been found that are forty thousand years old. I like to imagine them being played in imitation of the bird calls that surely inspired those early musicians.”
—Gary Young
Gary Young
Gary Young is the author of several collections of poetry, including American Analects (Persea Books, 2024); That’s What I Thought (Persea Books, 2018), winner of the Lexi Rudnitsky Editors Choice Award; and Even So: New and Selected Poems (White Pine Press, 2012). He is also a translator of Chinese and Japanese poetry.