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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kay Ryan

Kay Ryan has published several collections of poetry, including The Niagara River (Grove Press, 2005) and Say Uncle (2000)...
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		Poems about Birds
		Tender Buttons [Chicken] by Gertrude Stein

		Littlefoot, 19, [This is the bird hour] by Charles Wright

		The Scarlet Ibis, Section VII by Susan Hahn

		A Bird came down the Walk (328) by Emily Dickinson

		Birdcall by Alicia Suskin Ostriker

		Birds Again by Jim Harrison

		Birds Appearing In A Dream by Michael Collier

		Darwin's Finches by Deborah Digges

		Evening Hawk by Robert Penn Warren

		Hope is the thing with feathers (254) by Emily Dickinson

		Hummingbird by Elaine Terranova

		I am Like a Desert Owl, an Owl Among the Ruins by Noelle Kocot

		If the Owl Calls Again by John Haines

		In Flight by Jennifer K. Sweeney

		Last Night I Dreamed of Chickens by Jack Prelutsky

		Leda and the Swan by W. B. Yeats

		Leda, After the Swan by Carl Phillips

		Let Birds by Linda Gregg

		My Mother Would Be a Falconress by Robert Duncan

		Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

		Poet as Immortal Bird by Ron Padgett

		Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar

		The Blue by David Baker

		The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

		The Eagle by Lord Alfred Tennyson

		The Heron by Linda Hogan

		The Parakeets by Alberto Blanco

		The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

		The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

		The Starlings by Jesper Svenbro

		The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins

		The Yellow Bittern (An Bunnan Bui) by Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Gunna, read by James Wright

		Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens

		To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley

		To a Waterfowl by William Cullen Bryant


		Related Prose
		Video: Chickens and the Funnies by Kay Ryan

Home to Roost
by Kay Ryan


The chickens are circling and blotting out the day. The sun is bright, but the chickens are in the way. Yes, the sky is dark with chickens, dense with them. They turn and then they turn again. These are the chickens you let loose one at a time and small— various breeds. Now they have come home to roost—all the same kind at the same speed.
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Audio Clip
October 6, 2006 Kaye Playhouse, New York City From the Academy Audio Archive
From The Niagara River by Kay Ryan, published by Grove Press. Copyright © 2005 by Kay Ryan. Used by permission. All rights reserved.