We rarely used to notice common birds
Invited now into the yard to feed.
“That’s a mourning dove!”, and other words,
We pin to birds we’ve seen in guides we read.
This matching of a species with its name—
“A woodpecker! On the fence’s rail”—
Has quickly turned into a fav’rite game.
Unlike the birds confined in wiry jail,
These welcome visitors remain at ease
While hunting worms in grass, enjoying grain
The feeder holds, providing songs in trees,
And taking baths in pots that catch the rain.
These birds, who in our garden daily roam,
Are part of what has made this place a home.
an Elizabethan sonnet by Paul Burgess
Miscellaneous Inanities 