Flannery O’Connor says, “I write to discover what I know.” I love this sentiment, but I also write to discover what I don’t know. The following poem came from a freewriting session…and I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with it. I like it, and it speaks to me, but I can’t exactly articulate the feelings it stirs.

Writing for me is something mysterious. I feel truth when I write, and then I stand back and say, “What am I trying to tell myself?” I usually have an idea or two, and sometimes I just shrug and say, “Erm…okay. I guess I needed to get that out.”

We the Birds

We eat from the ground
and shake with purpose,
remembering the night
we were set free and how
the rest of the flock stayed
in the girl’s night-dark hair,
which was a nest, a memory,
all things to all people
and all things to all birds.

You overthink everything,
your mother the crow blinks
in Morse code, and a small
man with hollow knees sits
at the desk and takes down
the words, his eyes dots,
his mouth a dash, his ears
two seashells–if you listen

to them, you don’t hear the sea
but the endless drone of space,
that cold nothingness, that eternal
home of ours that calls us now,
even though we’re only birds,
even though we know nothing.