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little birds brown and plain are not less noticed than sea-churning whales flashing stallions supple leopards or cool, still herons blue on blue little birds fly into windows lie broken on the roof while wild winter rains scour feathers from the glass and nearly nobody knows or cares a billion people elsewhere could care less about our fears our deaths but Jesus sees the brown and plain broken against the windowpane and recalls the hot sun and the grit of Jerusalem dirt
I chose this poem, sparrows, because it most fulfills what Archibald Macleish wrote in his poem “Ars Poetica”—A poem should not mean/but be. I had always thought of titles as a kind of honor, not something that made any difference in a life, but when I was named Lake County Poet Laureate number 3, doors swung open that I didn’t expect. I was invited to read at the first two gatherings of all the California poets laureate with Al Young, the California Poet Laureate at that time, who spent the entire two days with us. He is a masterful poet, musician, actor, and human being, and I reveled in his encouragement to me to keep “representing” for the Chinese and the blind. It was also a life-changing experience because we heard all the best poets from the state and discovered that ours, Jim Lyle, James BlueWolf, Sandra Wade, and I, were well qualified to be in that illustrious company. My favorite accomplishment was the increase in literacy concerning poetry. I founded the writers group at the Arts Council, and I hosted a big literary workshop with the PLs from neighboring counties reading their poems and teaching on poetic structure (such as compression and the sounds of words). It was gratifying to see the quality of poetry increase as enthusiastic writers learned what makes a poem different from prose and found their own voices in this unique and magnificent genre.
