Flamingo, Birdy, Penguin

Birds are important to me.

Gulls and ravens have flown through my poems for all the years I have written them: “One white bird, two black birds...”

Every year, for the last twenty-five, I have marked down the date of my first bluebird sighting.  They are my official harbinger of spring.

I regularly talk with my magpie neighbors.

On my recent trip back to Ohio, Mackenna and I played sticker book regularly.  Finding a good placement for the white mama duck was always our first priority.

We are all about the birds.

Little Mackenna, though having just this month turned two (with a little help from her mother), sent me a Father’s Day card.

Today, I am posting a photograph of the card.

These birds are the rarest and most beautiful.

--Mitchell Hegman