No one wants a building that kills birds
—Headline, The Guardian, May 15, 2025
Night flight
migrating north
into a mirror maze
a billion songbirds die before
they mate
morning
chorus once woke
me. A silent sunrise—
an apocalypse, the death of
delight
my grands
don’t know the thing
with feathers, the tune with
no words. That indigo bunting?
A myth.
the end
of metaphor
begins with songbirds’ flights
into our shrines of glass and light—
death cult
when all
the songbirds leave—
hide away in caves deep
beneath the earth, their nests made of
music
–
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio with his wife and writing companion, Debbie. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist and nominated for numerous awards including Best New Poets of 2025. His poems have appeared in Only Poems and Rattle, among others.