A carnival for the birds, I and the Bird #49 is up on Dave Bonta‘s Via Negativa. I submitted my recent bird sightings and Dave linked to my post about the Cedar Waxwings.

But not in an obvious way. Dave did something unusual with the contributions this time. I’ll let him explain:

Poems, like birds, are everywhere; it’s just a matter of training ourselves to recognize them — a metaphor here, an alliterative passage there, and something lovely dark and deep lurking just beyond. And with a little bit of editing, the English language naturally resolves into a rough iambic pentameter…

Each line in the “found poem” below is a link to the post I lifted it from. I’ve altered nothing but the punctuation, and I’ve included an audio version for those who may have trouble hearing the poetry at first.

It was hard to recognize my own words in this context:

Who knows how they knew they were there.

Out of its original context, it reads more like a Zen koan than a sentence from a blog post. I don’t want to spoil the accidental poetry of that line by explaining it.

Go check out IATB#49 for all the poetry. I recommend taking the time to listen to Dave’s audio recording. He has a poet’s voice.