“Unsettled, a bird lost from the flock --Keeps flying by itself in the dusk.Back and forth, it has no resting place,Night after night, more anguished its cries.Its shrill sound yearns for the pure and distant --Coming from afar, how anxiously it flutters!It chances to find a pine tree growing all apart;Folding its wings, it has come home at last.In the gusty wind there is no dense growth;This canopy alone does not decay.Having found a perch to roost on,In a thousand years it will not depart.”

“It has thrown off its disguise as a meal and has revealed itself to me for what it is, a large dead bird. I'm eating a wing. It's the wing of a tame turkey, the stupidest bird in the world, so stupid it can't even fly any more. I am eating lost flight.”

“Out of the clouds I hear a faint bark, as of a faraway dog. It is strange how the world cocks its ear to that sound, wondering. Soon it is louder: the honk of geese, invisible, but coming on.The flock emerges from the low clouds, a tattered banner of birds, dipping and rising, blown up and blown down, blown together and blown apart, but advancing, the wind wrestling lovingly with each winnowing wing. When the flock is a blur in the far sky I hear the last honk, sounding taps for summer.It is warm behind the driftwood now, for the wind has gone with the geese. So would I--if I were the wind.”

“The trees of the LORD are well watered, the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.There the birds make their nests; the stork has its home in the pine trees.”

“Today the mockingbird does not sound very happy. It sounds if it is coming apart. As of the very heart of itself-its song-is breaking into pieces and flying off in a hundred directions.”

“No bird in a cage has ever come to know what the mountain winds feel like, by staring at the free flying birds, wishing that they would fall from the sky!”