Rick Barot’s poem “Bird Notes” explores the idea of placement and displacement in words and lines jam-packed with meaning. We’ve got surface meaning and under-the-surface meaning. There’s an exploration of nature, color, belonging, and movement (and non-movement).

The surface meaning is about birds and how each bird belongs to a season and has a particular appearance. The reference to Persephone indicates the change of the seasons. The poem brings us through the year and back again. Each section, each bird, tells us something about the cycle. The cardinal is “the deep/Benedictine red/of fall leaves.” The crow is in the winter snow and is black “woodsmoke/ waxing on its skin.” The blue jay is blue, and “it rustled off/to a new branch.” The “new branch” shows us the change from winter to spring. The hummingbird appears “midsummer” and is blurred. The image of time as a process is reinforced.

The use of the birds, however, illustrates humanity’s own journey through time. I have questions about whom, specifically, may be described here. Who is “he”? It is more that just a bird but is there a particular person the speaker is conveying? Is this about the immigrant experience? Is it about a lover’s experience of moving on? Or might it be an experience we may all share of our place in time? In reading and rereading the poem, I saw each of these in the language and descriptions.

Each section of the poem ends with something left behind, each evoking meaning. The first section ends with an additional bird – the owl. Owls are often thought of as wise, all-knowing, and giving nothing away. But it is “an owl-faced parking meter” which gives us the idea that there is a price you pay for staying in one place. The earlier lines, “as if he too/had had to pass through/some fire, had to be saved/just to be here” shows the movement of the cardinal. “He” has been somewhere else, survived an ordeal, and landed here to “perch.” The fire again highlights the red color, but also reminds us of the contrast between the “joss sticks” (Chinese incense) and the Benedictines. Is it a clash of cultures or a clash with another individual? This section says “one more version of come as you are,” but started with a description of a “bandit mask.” His identity was concealed, and makes me ask “who is this?” “what is he doing here?” and “where does he belong?” and “what does it mean to ‘come as you are’?”

The second section ends with a direct reference to time. The crow is “the enraged sound” of its caw, “the staggering/thing someone comes to find/exterior to time.” The outrage that “[h]e has seen it all before” is apparent here; and the idea that “[i]t’s all the same” causes the outrage. If the outrage is “exterior to time,” then nothing ever changes and “the crow is not happy about it! If, like the cardinal, he has been through an ordeal, why has nothing changed? Is there no relief? It’s “staggering.”

When we reach the third section, we find accidental “branch-caught” or “shrub-snagged” evidence of change, but we hear about “the tune of infidelity/being played inside.” Is the outrage then over loyalty? How should one remain faithful – to a country or to a lover? What if you must move on? Persephone was kidnapped and raped and brought to the underworld. Suddenly a poem about birds becomes something much more. Often, we think about birds as symbols of freedom – they can fly anywhere they want, can’t they? But here we see their activities are limited.

The hummingbird section completes the cycle and echoes some of the imagery from earlier sections. He is a “beloved incidental” – a little something – almost “a kind of avian kitsch”, “[b]ut even the dark/didn’t keep his business/from continuing.” He has flown away from his “bottle-cap nest.” He is free to go; life moves along. The “blurred hinge/of his body and wings steadied him.” We’ve got movement, but we’ve also got stability. At the end of this section, we see the “blush/on the air he had occupied.” He may be fading from one place or memory, but it is clear that he is, nonetheless, still there.

Sheila Joseph