By Margaret Ingraham
I wonder if the birds watch me
as I do them each morning
as my dog and I take the same walk
under the same but ever-changing trees.
My pup keeps his nose trained down
hunting the trail of what has gone before
while I look ahead, around and up,
hoping at day’s beginning to catch a hint
written in the sky of what its end might be.
Meanwhile the birds sing on predictably
without much need, it seems to me,
to know anymore than what is given,
not what the shifting winds will bring
or even if tomorrow will come to them.
Poet and photographer Margaret B. Ingraham is the author of a poetry collection ‘Exploring this Terrain’ (Paraclete Press, 2020); ‘This Holy Alphabet,’ lyric poems based on her original translation of Psalm 119 (Paraclete Press, 2009); and a poetry chapbook, Proper Words for Birds (Finishing Line Press), nominated for the 2010 Library of Virginia Award in poetry. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Courtship of Winds, Door is A Jar Magazine, Evening Street Review, The Hollins Critic, MacGuffin, Medicine and Meaning, Mount Hope Magazine, Nonconformist Magazine, Off the Coast, Spiritus, Steam Ticket, THINK Journal, Third Wednesday, Umbrella Factory Magazine, Visitant Lit, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Ingraham is the recipient of an Academy of American Poetry Award, a Sam Ragan Award, and numerous residential Fellowships at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Margaret has twice collaborated with internationally recognized composer Gary Davison, most notably to create “Shadow Tides,” a choral symphony commissioned by Artistic Director Gretchen Kuhrmann for Choralis to commemorate the tenth anniversary of September 11th and performed on that date in 2011 in Washington, DC. She holds a BA from Vanderbilt University, an MA in English from Georgia State University, and pursued doctoral studies in English (with an emphasis on English Romantic Poetry) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ingraham resides in Alexandria, Virginia
