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Poetry

Black-Necked Stilt

#birds, #poem, #poetry, #the sun, #the sun magazine
Black-Necked Stilt By Robert Cording•May 2025 Because I did not know the bird I looked at, I memorized its features— the stately black neck; the thin black beak and long rose-pink legs; the white of its underside and eyebrows in contrast to its dark back and small black-capped head. And because another bird-watcher stopped just then and said, Black-necked stilt, then went on— the name so matter-of-factly matching the bird, as if Adam himself were giving it for the first time—I said, Thank you, and sat down on a bench to look again at the elegant stilt, its tapered beak working like chopsticks to lift shrimp and minnows from the water. The bird gave me all the time I needed. I’m sure it was just doing what it did each evening, like the ibises arrowing in groups of six and eight to roost in the mangroves or the wood storks on their last go-round, the water shimmering in twilight colors—pinks, lavenders, orange reds. Nothing at all out of the ordinary, but the only two words I’d spoken in the last two hours still echoed in my head, filling me with the overwhelming sense of why we give thanks for what we’re given, even so simple a thing as a name.

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