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Traveler

From the foot of Cotopaxi
and across the Gulf

a Blackburnian warbler
follows a pulse,

follows Polaris
and the Pole's magnetic field

through travail
and travel's long ordeal,

until he drops
to a black walnut's
pinnate leaves

tossing like waves
in the North Sea

and glances toward
my lamplit, stationary world
of smooth planes:

against a cloud,
his throat's flame.

From Traveler by Devin Johnston. Copyright 2011 by Devin Johnston. Excerpted by permission of the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Devin Johnston

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