Grasshopper Sparrow Poem by Hugh Steinberg

The land is mowed of its names, feel bravery towards unusual things.
A risk for me. Risks are good. Symptoms flare. Get to arch
into your own body deep in its exile. Oh sparrow you say,
lawned and getting heavier, in this state I'm more fully a sense.
You use the word body too much. Someone should pinch you every time you say it,
someone should take the keys away from you if you're going to drive like this.
I got the music undercover post-midnight transistor radio seventies kid style; like many others
when I feel that way,
the way where you're going, I see the grassy plains, the gravel pits scooped from them.
Like a song a late night thing when sounds stick, a magic trick at 3:00 AM.
Preferring conservation preserve program land. A secretive bird.
Turning a knob between zones of static, white noise and oscillation tones.
Even to this another's knifing through anything is possible their buzzy song.
When you don't name it you don't hear it. And that is really all I want, that it make me
hope and your mind, sweeping, you sort of know, to connect the knob turning,
the seeking, the mad nature, the negotiation of the frequency interference
to how I love to not despair. Grasshopper sparrows stay out of sight unless they are singing.
They will perch on a weed stalk, shrub, or fence wire and belt out issues of feeling alone
and a part of things at the same time in a jar like a lightning bug I'm brave.