I had a chance to open up the windows briefly the past few nights and turn off the air conditioning, and I was soon reminded of the joyful sound that I have been missing all summer which begins just before sunrise -- no, it is not the sound of my Henry Frank scratching at the bedroom door trying to get into the room to wake me up -- it is the sound of the wonderful chorus of songbirds outside in the yard! Cardinals, blue jays, morning doves, sparrows, goldfinches, mockingbirds, robins, bluebirds, and other assorted beauties serenade us from predawn to dusk. Even after the sun goes down, the melodies continue with the lovely owls who roost high in the trees.
Several months ago I discovered a wonderful book entitled "Bright Wings - An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds". The book is edited by Billy Collins. Starting today, I will begin "Bright Wings Fridays", wherein I will share some of the poems from this book with you on my blog. I suppose it is fitting that I begin this series of posts with a poem about the Robin. There are several poems in the book about the Robin, but I chose the most pleasant, and certainly the one written by the most distinguished poet -- Emily Dickinson. And so we begin........
I Have A Bird In Spring
I have a bird in spring
Which for myself doth sing --
The spring decoys.
And as the summer nears --
And as the rose appears,
Robin is gone.
Yet I do not repine
Knowing that bird of mine
Though flown --
Learneth beyond the sea
Melody new for me
And will return.
Fast in a safer hand --
Held in a truer Land
Are mine --
And though they now depart,
Tell I my doubting heart,
They're thine.
In a serener Bright
In a more golden light
I see
Each little doubt and fear,
Each little discord here
Removed.
Then I will not repine,
Knowing that bird of mine --
Though flown --
Shall in a distant tree
Bright melody for me
Return.
Emily Dickinson
The Owl
His element is silent and inexorable.
Mack the Knife waits in his eyes,
yet he is generous and brings his young
eleven mice four bullheads
thirteen grouse two eels
three rabbits and a woodcock
all in one night.
It is too much to expect prose
to learn from the owl
his exact knowledge of his object,
his exact eyes claws wings
and be the scourge of rats?
It might, like him, then live to
sixty-eight years in the clear impersonal
and look wise and imperturbable.
Carl Rakosi
As always -- Be Well and Happy --
Robin
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