American Icarus
News Item: Since 1970, one third of the migrating birds have disappeared from North America
The waxwings flow through singly and in pairs,
hop-flying in the hawthorn and dogwood.
Winterberry brings them in flocks, in floods
of crenellating murmurs in the air.
I am making foils, something I can wear
to work myself among them. I can lead
the migration, I’m certain. I’m not good
at separating seed from fruit, but there
are lanes up high, below the jets, where I
can see myself flying the annual treks
from tundra to tropics, returning by
moonlight, weeks between meals. And if I wreck,
I hope the flock goes on to mating ground,
a mist of beings from the clouds, bottleneck
in time snapped off, the population sound.
David Epstein holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. Most recently was teaching Creative Writing at the University of Hartford. He can often be found in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Epstein is on the Board of the Greater Hartford Friends and Enemies of Wallace Stevens. He has three children, and lives in West Hartford, Connecticut. He has reviewed for Harvard Review and Shofar, as well as recent reviews for Tupelo Press appearing in Heavy Feather and elsewhere; his poems have appeared in such venues as The Bellingham Review (where he was a Featured Poet), Marsh Hawk Review, RatsAss Review, and more. In January of 2021 he was awarded First Prize in the in the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Nutmeg Contest.