The Thing With Feathers

Performed at Poets/Speak 2026 at the Bangor Public Library

Before the rise of civilizations

There was no “in” the forest

There was only the forest

Like there was only the plains

Or the mountains or the grasslands

You either stood in a bosque of antiquity with the pines and the chestnuts as your council

Or watched an endless, crossless, uncrossable sea lap at your feet, 

because boats weren’t invented until at least 50,000 years ago

And before that, you could not even fathom your feet leaving this land.

The sun didn’t emit UV Rays, it just burned your skin pink,

And all you could say was thank you to the clouds, because some days are warmer than others.

You did not need to know “why” to know “what”. 

You knew what the rainclouds shouted when it rattled in your ribs.

You knew what the coyotes said when their howls bounced off the moon.

You lived and died with your questions swaddled with deer skin around your back.

So when I find myself asking things like,

“Why does hurt sit perched in the same cage as my hope?”

And why do I feel I cannot carry the ignorance any further, 

I wonder what my ancestors did to not get weighed down with it all.

To keep from tossing it all into the water, and just letting their hopes sink to the bottom.

And I think maybe they didn’t always get the answers they wanted, but they got the ones they needed

They didn’t have to stare too long at an old log with intricately carved swirls to know that a bark beetle was the artist

It wasn't curiosity that drove them north then east then north then southeast, it was hunger.

And when life led them to more questions, 

They wove them into baskets,

Or they carved them into watercraft,

Or they foraged for more bedding, more firewood, more rabbits,

So they could keep their questions alive 

to be answered another day

Even if not for themselves.

They did not bang on the bars, pleading with the birds to talk to them

They simply went out into the woods and listened

And the woods must have answered as they have since the first dawn

in howls, in thunder, in time, and in the winds in the birdsongs.