This is Bird Note. I'm Mark Bramhill. It's National Poetry Month in the U.S., and each year

we like to celebrate by sharing our favorite contemporary writers' work about birds. Ornithologist

and poet J. Drew Lanham often writes about racial justice and his experience as a black man

in the outdoors. Like when he was out birding.

And this racist man, he had threatened me in this place where I traditionally looked

for white crown sparrows.

So I was looking for them in this other space that was, you know, a lot of people would

pass by and not look at.

And I didn't find white crown sparrows, but I was looking at swamp sparrows and a Lincoln sparrow.

In the face of injustice, Drew has found that joy can be a powerful act of resistance.

And so, watching these sparrows and habitat that many people would overlook inspired a poem celebrating

these little brown birds. Sparrow envy

Were I the sparrow, brown-backed, skittish and small,

I would find haven in thorniest thickets,

Search far and wide for fields laying fallow.

Treasure the unkempt.

Worship the unmoan.

Covet the weed-strewn row.

I would slink between sedges, chip unseen from brambles,

Skulk deep within hedges, and desire the ditches grown wild. I would find great joy in the mist sodden morning, sing humble pleas from the highest weeds, and plead for the gray days to stay.

I asked Drew, were he the sparrow?

What species would he be?

...