A Second Poem About Survival: Blue Jay Poem by Dennis Ryan

Friday night, July 8,2022

The old Blue Jay is dead, well dead—
the one I wrote about sixteen years ago.
The gray hair on top of her head is no more.
Her eyes taught me about survival, but are no longer here,
like her. She no longer perches on a branch in my backyard,
no longer holds her weathered wings in tight.
She can't teach me about survival anymore, but I remember—
remember what she taught. I am now old as she was.
I wrote, 'She looks out at us with empathy—yes, I said empathy.
This is what it means to survive for a long time:
I can identify with you.' I can identify with her.
It's funny how I keep coming back to her,
remember exactly how she looked, how she perched,
how she had aged compared to other Blue Jays.
How can such a small creature teach me about life's meanings,
how to survive, when the greatest philosophers' teachings can't?
I guess some things aren't made clear to us in life.
We just see, hear, and feel them. That's enough.