I’ve been thinking about community, after a Halloween that included a potluck meet-and-greet party on our street, the first in the 17-ish years we’ve lived here. Turns out that Copper Canyon Press put together a beautiful anthology of poems of connection early in the pandemic, and I discovered this Dan Gerber poem there. Through the poem I also discovered the myth of the Jian bird, which is born with just one wing and one eye and thus must lean against another bird and act as one in order to fly. It’s an ancient myth, which is to say as true as ever.
“no me, no you, no opinions,
no beginning, no middle, no end
”
