“Write your own poem that focuses on birdsong.” (https://www.napowrimo.net/day-twenty-three-11/)
There’s a phenomenon called
the Critical Flicker Frequency
defining how we see and hear,
how we experience the world.
Different animals have different
Critical Flicker Frequencies,
so different animals
experience the world differently.
It’s believed that birds hear
faster than we do, that they
can pack more music into one note
than we pack into a melody.
I listen to a whippoorwill
and wonder why it sings
the same thing (always the same)
with such insistent repetition.
But it doesn’t. Within each note,
entire symphonies my slow ears
will never be able to hear,
each repetition sung uniquely,
Full of detail and meaning,
abundant with variations
I will never know
and cannot access.
Some animal see colors
I literally cannot imagine,
some smell scents on scales
inaccessible to me.
Some can feel the world
with near-molecular resolution,
and some taste things
for which I have no receptors.
Each sensoria experiencing
a world unrecognizable to others.
There is so much
that I will never know.
Do I find this ignorance
wondrous or fearful?
Both, sometimes, depending,
and even my fear is a wonder.
John the Librarian 