Killdeer

Nick Flynn

You know how it pretends

to have a broken wing to

lure predators away from its

nest, how it staggers just out

of reach . . . if, at this moment,

you’re feeling metaphorical,

nest can be the whatever

inside us that we think needs

protection, the whatever that is

small & hasn’t yet found its

way. Like us it has lived so long

on scraps, on what others have

left behind, it thinks it could live

on air, on words, forever almost,

it thinks it would be better to let

the predator kill it than to turn

its back on that child again,

forgetting that one lives inside

the other.
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About This Poem

“I generally have a problem with anthropomorphizing, with what’s called the pathetic fallacy, forgetting that we are all part of the deeper mystery of the natural world. I think our minds are the limits of what is measurable. I sometimes think that everything is measurable, yet the fact that a killdeer does this dance fills me with unspeakable sadness and joy.”

—Nick Flynn