STATE LINES
California Poetry
Drawn to the Sonoma coast’s bare hills and fog, Alfred Hitchock shot much of “The Birds” in Bodega Bay. Actress Tippi Hedren made her debut in the classic film. Years later, she openly discussed Hitchcock’s abusive behavior during production. (In one famous scene, he swapped mechanical birds with real crows without telling Hedren beforehand.) The psychological drama of the movie, and the actress’ experience on set, provide fertile material for a poet like Kristin Robinson. Robinson craves intimacy with birds because they are a source of poetic inspiration, but she’s also aware that Hedren has some darker knowledge to share about getting too close to these winged, wild creatures. Letter to Tippi Hedren Remember after Hitch said, Enough pretending,
let’s put real birds in, how you went on with your life, strolled past two crows pecking dunes of cornmeal off a muffin pan in the street. You didn’t gauge their caws too close to a conversation or conspiracy. All this time I’ve looked to you to confirm the numbers of terns or skimmers, the laughing gulls, low hoverers ever closer to the hand’s stale baguette. Please don’t admit now that you can’t be sure. When geese stop traffic, loosed upon the world on my morning commute, or when I count forty-seven hummingbirds at the feeder, keep the truth to yourself. Allow me my awe, my sweet joy when a hawk lands on the hood of a car, graceful and intended as a leaf.
“Letter to Tippi Hendren” is from “Surgical Wing” © 2017, by Kristin Robertson. The poem appears with the permission of Alice James Books. All rights reserved. Kristin Robertson lives outside Los Angeles and teaches at the UC Riverside. “Surgical Wing” is her first book of poems. David Roderick is the co-founder of Left Margin LIT: A Home for the Literary Arts, in Berkeley. He is author of “Blue Colonial” and “The Americans.”