Tag: bird

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Poems

Old Charts

The tea leaves are muddled; the lies are twice-told.
A lot and very little have changed. 
Folk are not called slaves but still they are sold,
And some marriages can still be arranged.

Still.  Still: Ignorance, as before, is poor.
It thieves, robbing both the foolish and wise.
And still, honest work makes a cherished core;
Since before the Greeks, such work has been prized.

Some metaphors remain too: Hope, the bird—
Whether caged or just a “thing with feathers”—
Has, as its strong song, the uplifting word;
Its wings fly one out of foulest weathers.

So, much is hard to parse: wild, chaotic.
But the human spirit remains so clear.
Amidst the coiling maelstrom psychotic
Are love and care: old charts by which we steer.

Categories
Poems

The Bird

This poem tells of a little bird that grew inside me. The poem is written in free verse.

still-life-with-three-dead-birds-cherries-redcurrants-and-insects-jean-baptiste-oudry-1712-4810f396
Jean-Baptiste Oudry – Still Life with Three Dead Birds, Cherries, Redcurrants, and Insects, 1712.

“It’s good,” said the little sparrow in my breast,
As if sparrows could talk,
As if sparrows in breasts could talk.
So saying, the sparrow encouraged the egg to grow.

And so the egg developed.
It grew in its nest,
One made of thorny vines,
Bent sticks, and poison oak.

“And look, soon it will be hatching.”
First its beak pierced
The shell of my bloody heart,
And then out, through that shell, came a head.

Out came the little chick, Wrath,
Whom I’d been nursing for years.
I fed it on worms and belladonna,
Nurtured it, and taught my hate to fly.

“Go on, dear bird, fly far,” I told it.
But it never did, no.
It stayed, circling my head,
Because I had cared for it well.

And now, now that I am old,
I cannot make it leave.

Categories
Limericks Poems

Sunday Limericks

The ouroboros is an ancient depiction (often of a dragon or snake eating its tail) which represents circular motion, completeness, or infinity—particularly with regard to the cycle of life and death.

Serpiente_alquimica
In 1478, Theodoros Pelecanos produced a copy of a medieval texts and illustrations.  One of these illustrations was the ouroboros above, whose actual origin is of unknown provenance.

∞ Ouroboros ∞
There once was a warbling bird
Whose song was the sweetest heard
It would brighten the day
In its melodious way
Till it was devoured by a cat who purred.

There once was a tender cat
Who was petted wherever he sat
He purred and meowed
And was often quite loud
Till he was killed by a child with a bat.

There once was a man at his ease
Who was as generous as you could please
He made a better place
For our human race
Till he was killed by disease.

There once was a fertile earth
With life and much of great worth
With each generation that passed
She produced a progeny vast
In ever-evolving hale yonic birth.
∞ Ouroboros ∞