J. Drew Lanham’s Sparrow Envy

This is Bird Note, I'm Mark Bramhill.

It's National Poetry Month in the U.S., and each year we like to celebrate by sharing our favorite contemporary writers' work about birds.

Ornithologist and poet Jay Drew Lanham often writes about racial justice and his experience as a black man in the outdoors, like when he was out birding.

In this racist man, he had threatened me in this place where I traditionally looked for white crowned sparrows, so I was looking for them in this other space that was, you know, a lot of people would pass by and not look at.

And I didn't find white crowned sparrows, but I was looking at swamp sparrows and a Lincoln sparrow.

In the face of injustice, Drew has found that joy can be a powerful act of resistance.

And so, watching these sparrows in habitat that many people would overlook inspired a poem celebrating these little brown birds.

Sparrow envy, where I, the sparrow, brown-backed skittish and small, I would find Haven in thorniest thickets, search far and wide for fields, lane-fallow, treasure the unkempt, worship the unmoan, covet the weed, strewn row,

I would slink between sedges, chip unseen from brambles, skulk deep within hedges and desire the ditches grown wild.

I would find great joy in the mist sodden morning, sing humble pleas from the highest weeds and plead for the grey days to stay.

I asked Drew, were he the sparrow? What species would he be?

Oh wow, um, I'd be the skulkiest sparrow. I'm thinking a henslose or a lacotte, or a fox sparrow.

Fox sparrows are pretty introverted, they don't mind speaking up but you hardly ever seen them.

And then they make a decision, they're like, oh, I've been in this patch for a couple of weeks.

Okay, I'm finally going to show myself, and there it is, right?

And a fox sparrow is just, I mean, it's almost a thrush, but it's still a sparrow.

And so it's code switching a little bit, I think.

If I had to give fox sparrows a name, I'd call them code switching sparrows.

And I feel like that's kind of true to who I kind of have to be in the world.

Want to hear more poetry about birds?

Check out our new hour long special words in flight.

You can find it on our website, birdnote.org. I'm Mark Bramhill.

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