We all share a deep memory, a primordial intuition that we can fly. The fall of light into matter is an old story, mythic as our ancestral dreams, as foundational as modern science. In The First Bird we travel again through the world, through the land of our first experiences, work our way through the dense habits of the body as the mind becomes clear and clearer still until... until, with healed wings, we fly toward the light. We cannot escape this journey. Every blood cell in our bodies is drawn towards it. The First Bird asks the reader to suspend disbelief, and to invite the imagination in. Fortunately, that’s easy to do once the opening poem is read. Bynum takes us through creation, through lifespan psychology, through myth, through death and rebirth. Each poem is masterful; the entire collection is highly sophisticated, but easily read. You must jump into these poems—or fly into them—and to wherever the First Bird’s spirit takes you. —Cynthia Brackett-Vincent, publisher and editor of The Aurorean poetry journal