On Redwing Blackbird
by Chera Hammons
Hi. I’m Chera Hammons, a poet from Amarillo, Texas, here for Poets on the Plains. It’s a beautiful morning and the birds are singing. I’m sharing a poem with you today by former Texas Panhandle resident Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. Though she doesn’t live here anymore, this place is still an important part of her work, which often calls back to her time here on the High Plains.
Allison has written or edited 18 books. Her most recent poetry book, Look at This Blue, was a 2022 National Book Award Finalist. In 2021, she was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside where she recently directed the UCR Writers Week Festival. She came of age working fields, factories, and waters and is currently at work on a film, Red Dust: resiliency in the dirty thirties, a new CD, and new poems.
It’s my pleasure to share with you Allison’s lovely poem “Redwing Blackbird” from her book titled Blood Run. I was initially drawn to this poem because it’s always such a treat to see redwing blackbirds perched in the tall golden prairie grasses, the flash of scarlet and yellow on their wings so vivid it almost seems like a lucky mistake.
Redwing Blackbird
Feet firmly perch
thinnest stalks, reeds, bulrush.
Until all at once, they attend my
female form, streaked throat, brownness.
Three fly equidistant
around me, flashing.
Each, in turn, calls territorial
trills, beckons ok-a-li, ok-a-li!
Spreads his wings, extends
inner muscle quivering red
epaulet bands uniquely bolden.
Turn away each suitor,
mind myself my audience.
Select another to consider,
He in turn quiver thrills.
Leave for insects.
Perhaps one male follows.
Maybe a few brood of young,
line summertime.
Silver Maple samaras
wing wind, spread clusters
along with mine, renewing Prairie.
As summer closes, I leave
dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies,
mosquitoes, moths, spiders, crickets for
grain, seed, Sunflower;
join thousands to flock Sky--
grackles, blackbirds, cowbirds, starlings--
Swarming like distant smoke clouds, rising.
| “Redwing Blackbird” used with permission. |
What I love about this poem is that it feels like walking slowly across these vibrant prairies, which are our home, while the seasons change around us. The poem begins with the sight of a redwing blackbird, and then the thrill of the speaker when she is noticed by the blackbird in turn. It means something, to say that each are worth noticing. It’s a give-and-take between the speaker and the birds, as they assign meaning and intention to each other. And then the poem widens out to include the field itself, and everything in it.
And as the speaker moves through the prairie, she sees that the land is renewing itself. For each change of seasons is its own type of renewal, a type of preparation for something to come. And she is also a part of that renewal. Sights and sounds shift as each aspect of the season announces itself, then recedes to make place for the next. In this poem, birds, insects, plants, and weather are all exactly where they should be. In this time of turmoil, of dust storms and drought, I find this poem to be so comforting.
By the poem’s end, it feels as though the poet has made it to the end of the prairie—what should be the end—but then, she looks up. And the sky is filled with all types of birds, lifting into the sky ahead of her, calling her forward. Telling her there is still so much more to see. That she is part of this, too.
Thank you for being with us for Poets on the Plains. I’m Chera Hammons, Panhandle poet, coming to you from Amarillo, Texas, the Yellow City.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Chera Hammons is a winner of awards through PEN Texas and the Texas Institute of Letters. She holds an MFA from Goddard College and formerly served as writer-in-residence at West Texas A&M University. Her work, which is rooted in love for the natural world, appears in Baltimore Review, Pleiades, Poetry, Rattle, The Southern Review, The Sun, The Texas Observer, and elsewhere. She lives on the windswept prairies of the Texas Panhandle. She has two new books forthcoming: Salvage List from Belle Point Press in June 2025, and Birds of America from The Dial Press (an imprint of Penguin Random House) in 2026. More information can be found at www.cherahammons.com.
FEATURED POET
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke’s most recent book, Look at This Blue, was a 2022 National Book Award Finalist. In 2021, she was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters and awarded the 2021 AWP George Garrett Award from AWP. An American Book Award winning author and 2016 Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellow, Hedge Coke has written or edited 18 books and is a Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing for the University of California Riverside and directs the Medical Health and Humanities Designated Emphasis in the School of Medicine, where she also teaches Death and Dying and Narrative Medicine. More information can be found at www.hedgecoke.com.
