bird poems

BLUE by Sidney Wade The great blue song of the earth is sung in all the best venues— treetop, marsh, desert, shore— and on this spring day in the wetlands where, under a late sun, we stand alone and in love with each other and the passing day we watch a cormorant whose eye is ringed in blue diamonds, a shimmering lure, and we love this blue and this dark bird and this deepening sky that pinks and hums in the west, and then the bird opens his beak and flutters his throat and the late afternoon light illuminates the inside tissue of his mouth which is as blue as his ocular jewelry, as blue as the bluest ocean, as blue as the sky in all its depth, as blue as the back of the small and determined beetle who struggles to roll his enormous dung ball in his own breeding bid to enchant another small blue miracle. ~ Copyright © 2016 by Sidney Wade. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, May 18, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

WELCOME TO POETRY FRIDAY AT ALPHABET SOUP!

Please help yourself to warm blueberry muffins and green tea. 🙂

Something I look forward to every Spring is spying that first flash of blue alighting on a bare branch outside my window. Bluebird!

If the sun’s out, the bluebird’s feathers dazzle. He must know how handsome he is. Before the trees have budded, this show of color offers hope and such joy. It’s amazing how just one little bird in a natty blue coat can transform a landscape.

The bluebird has been considered a harbinger of happiness by many world cultures for thousands of years. On this Mother’s Day weekend, here are bluebird poems by Emily Dickinson and Mary Oliver. I love the shared delight of these two poets, born 105 years apart.

Wishing you the gift of sweet birdsong amid the din, a spot of beauty to light the way, and many happy moments.

THE BLUEBIRD
by Emily Dickinson

Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!

(1896)

WHAT GORGEOUS THING
by Mary Oliver

I do not know what gorgeous thing
the bluebird keeps saying,
his voice easing out of his throat,
beak, body into the pink air
of the early morning. I like it
whatever it is. Sometimes
it seems the only thing in the world
that is without dark thoughts.
Sometimes it seems the only thing
in the world that is without
questions that can’t and probably
never will be answered, the
only thing that is entirely content
with the pink, then clear white
morning and, gratefully, says so.

~ from Blue Horses (Penguin Press, 2014)

Now, please leave your links with the dashing Mr. Linky below. I hope you enjoy flitting from blog to blog, sampling all the poetry goodness laid out for the taking. Thank you for joining us this week!