Tired of naming cattle & fish,
Adam turned to the birds.
“Raven,” he said;
then “dove,”
prophetically,
these first creatures of the air
who’d be symbols in a later time
or rain and flood and rainbow.
Of the birds who would
sing at dawn and dusk
he had little interest;
so Eve decided to try
her onomastic skill.
“Nightingale,” she whispered.
“Ibis, heron, flamingo,
parrot, peacock, tanager,”
mystery, grace, magnificence
of thought, motion, and design.
It took a woman
to properly name
the birds of Paradise.
—Stanley H. Barkan
