Bird Words
Lois Hetland

Lois Hetland, Ed.D., Associate Professor of Art Education at the Massachusetts College of Art, installs ephemerist works in urban and rural settings. Her selections of favorite poems on natural themes have migrated slowly from the banks of the Charles River in Cambridge (2003, 2004, 2005, all collected with Yonatan Grad), thence to the Boston Nature Center (May 2007), and then to Brookline, wheeling and turning as they flock across Boston’s urban green spaces. This collection illuminates metaphors of birds as sources of wisdom and truth, keepers of secrets about love and beauty, models of liberty and free choice, and an embodiment of connection, health, holiness, and hope. As visitors meander along these pathways in their urban migrations, this collected work offers an invitation to reflect on promises and possibility as a contrast to the usual messages of public regulatory signage: Keep off the grass; Pick up after your dog; Street Cleaning on Fourth Wednesdays. May a change of pace give you lift!

Read and Comment on the Poems

Meditation on Nesting
Sarah Beth Tracey

The urge to nest is universal. Whether we have little or nothing, are migratory ourselves, or live nestled beneath our belongings, we all have a need to create a space for ourselves. Sarah Beth Tracey, a student at Massachusetts College of Art, invites you to take a moment to meditate on nesting.

My Bird
Sarah Wade and 3^rd grade students from the Patrick O’Hearn School, Dorchester, MA http://www.boston.k12.ma.us/ohearn/

Sarah Wade, a 2007 alumnus of the Massachusetts College of Art, has been working with her third grade art class from the Patrick O’Hearn School to make birds to be put on display for the festival.  The students have been learning about color, painting, and installation art.  She thought it would be a great experience for the children to learn about this particular kind of artwork and be involved in a community project.

Emergence
Kyle Brock

As the forest awakens from its winter slumber, the melodies of birds saturate the air.  In response, hidden forest spirits have come forth to pay homage to their winged friends.  Kyle Brock, Studio Manager for Art Education at the Massachusetts College of Art, advises you to walk quietly along the woodland trails so that you may see some of these small creatures before they return to their underground dwellings.

Bath
Christine Jackson

Chrissy Jackson, Art Education student at Massachusetts College of Art, celebrates the materials, processes, and instincts of nature through this sculptural bird bath. Merging avian nest-building processes with her own craft, she uses wood, hemp, and terra cotta to create a nurturing niche that invites the sanctuary’s winged visitors to cleanse and re-hydrate during their migrations.

Flight
Mónika Aldarondo-Lugo

As a transplanted southerner, I have learned the meaning of hope and true joy through spring.  Waiting expectantly as buds appear and then blossom.  Hearing the songs of the birds and experiencing the explosion of color.  In this piece, I tried to capture the whimsical excitement I have felt as my own spirits lift every year during the spring.  The soaring joy that comes from watching butterflies, listening to birds, and seeing the world transform. Mónika Aldarondo-Lugo is a 2007 graduate of Massachusetts College of Art and is completing an internship at the Boston Arts Academy. 

The Love Bird Piece
Lily Gacki

Lily Gacki, student at Massachusetts College of Art, employs mixed media in painting, drawing, and sculptures to create her highly expressionist works. This piece, which has come to be known as the “Love Bird Piece,” was created in natural materials to express a relationship between and allusion to the similarities of courtship among all of nature’s creatures. 

Hark, Hark! The Lark At Heaven’s Gate Sings
Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings,
And Phoebus ‘gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With every thing that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise!
—William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616)

The Oven Bird
There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)

23
A bird came down the walk:
He did not know I saw;
He bit an angle-worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw.
And then he drank a dew
From a convenient grass,
And then hopped sidewise to the wall
To let a beetle pass.
He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all abroad,—
They looked like frightened beads, I thought
He stirred his velvet head
Like one in danger; cautious,
I offered him a crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer home
Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
Leap, plashless, as they swim.
—Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

Crazy Jay Blue)
crazy jay blue)
demon laughshriek
ing at me
your scorn of easily
hatred of timid
& loathing for(dull all
regular righteous
comfortable)unworlds
thief crook cynic
(swimfloatdrifting
fragment of heaven)
trickstervillain
raucous rogue &
vivid voltaire
you beautiful anarchist
(i salute thee
—e.e. cummings (1894 – 1962)

Bluebird
Over there, see the bluebird.
He’s my friend, a true bluebird.
He will give me the good word.
All the goodness that he’s heard
About you.
Yes, it’s true.
Someone should tell me.
Then he flies
Into skies.
Where he goes
Nobody knows.
He won’t say.
Just flies away.
Then returns.
Early each day.
He’s my friend, he’s my bluebird.
Come and tell me what’s new, bird.
Where’d you go, what’d you do, bird?
Tell me his love is true, bird.
Whisper near,
In my ear.
Gimme’ the good news.
—Jay Leonhart, as sung by Karrin Allyson

I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill
(Excerpt)
Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop
From low hung branches; little space they stop;
But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek;
Then off at once, as in a wanton freak:
Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings,
Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.
—John Keats (1795–1821)

A Spring Song (excerpt)
Ther’s little breezes stirrin’ in the leaves,
An sparrers chirpin’ ‘igh the ‘ole day long;
An ‘on the air a sad, sweet music breaves
A bonzer song –
A mournful sorter choon thet gits a bloke
Fair in the brisket ‘ere, an’ makes ‘im choke…
—CJ Dennis (1876 – 1938)

Come In
As I came to the edge of the woods,
Thrush music–hark!
Now if it was dusk outside,
Inside it was dark.
Too dark in the woods for a bird
By sleight of wing
To better its perch for the night,
Though it still could sing.
The last of the light of the sun
That had died in the west
Still lived for one song more
In a thrush’s breast.
Far in the pillared dark
Thrush music went–
Almost like a call to come in
To the dark and lament.
But no, I was out for stars:
I would not come in.
I meant not even if asked,
And I hadn’t been.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)

Kyle Brock

A Minor Bird
I have wished a bird would fly away
And not sing by my house all day;
Have clapped hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.
The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.
And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.
—Robert Frost (1874 – 1963)

 Ducks bobbing on the water-
Are they also, tonight,
Hoping to get lucky?
—Kobayashi Issa (1763 – 1827),
trans. Robert Hass

The Owls
Within the shelter of black yews
The owls in ranks are ranged apart
Like foreign gods, whose eyeballs dart
Red fire. They meditate and muse.
Without a stir they will remain
Till, in its melancholy hour,
Thrusting the level sun from power,
The shade establishes its reign.
Their attitude instructs the sage,
Content with what is near at hand,
To shun all motion, strife, and rage.
Men, crazed with shadows that they chase,
Bear, as a punishment, the brand
Of having wished to change their place.
—Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)
transl. Campbell

Nature Note
A bush warbler comes:
all muddy are the feet he wipes
upon the blooming plums.
—Kobayashi Issa (1763 – 1827),
transl. Henderson

On How to Sing
On how to sing
the frog school and the skylark school
are arguing.
—Masaoka Tsunenori Shiki
(1867 – September 19, 1902)
transl. Henderson

Washing Day
The cormorants
hang their feathers
out to dry –
black velvet rags
showing threadbare
in the wind.
Like old women
living in the past,
they tend their
tattered finery
with talon fingers
and black
remembering eyes.
—Rita Summers

 
Monika Aldarondo-Lugo

The Windhover
To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, kingdom
of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89)

Bird-Whistling
How much music (wild, simple, savage, doubtless, but so
tart-sweet,) there is in mere whistling. It is four-fifths of the
utterance of birds. There are all sorts and styles. For the last
half-hour, now, while I have been sitting here, some
feather’d fellow away off in the bushes has been repeating
over and over again what I may call a kind of throbbing
whistle. And now a bird about the robin size has just
appear’d, all mulberry red, flitting among the bushes—
head, wings, body, deep red, not very bright—no song, as I
have heard. 4 o’clock: There is a real concert going on
around me—a dozen different birds pitching in with a will.
There have been occasional rains, and the growths all show
its vivifying influences. As I finish this, seated on a log close
by the pond-edge, much chirping and trilling in the
distance, and a feather’d recluse in the woods near by is
singing deliciously—not many notes, but full of music of
almost human sympathy—continuing for a long, long while.
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)

After Lorca
the red-winged blackbird
sings, but not to call his pied-brown mate
or a cattail congerie–
he sings to be singing: he sings
the red-winged blackbird
sings, but not for the ever-returning spring,
or other springs, gone by—
he sings to be singing: he sings
the red-winged blackbird
sings, not to recall in us some preternatural
nature of things:
he sings
—Tom Gannon (c. 1986; rev. 1992)

3
At half-past three a single bird
Unto a silent sky
Propounded but a single term
Of cautious melody.
At half-past four, experiment
Had subjugated test,
And lo! her silver principle
Supplanted all the rest.
At half-past seven, element
Nor implement was seen,
And place was where the presence was,
Circumference between.
—Emily Dickinson (1830 – 86)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.
But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.
The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.
But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.
—Maya Angelou (1928 – )

Song—Go on, Sweet Bird, and Soothe My Care
For thee is laughing Nature gay,
For thee she pours the vernal day;
For me in vain is Nature drest,
While Joy’s a stranger to my breast.
—Robert Burns (1759–1796) 

The Duck
Behold the duck.
It does not cluck.
A cluck it lacks.
It quacks.
It is specially fond
Of a puddle or pond.
When it dines or sups,
It bottoms ups.
–Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971)

The Grackle
The grackle’s voice is less than mellow,
His heart is black, his eye is yellow,
He bullies more attractive birds
With hoodlum deeds and vulgar words,
And should a human interfere,
Attacks that human in the rear.
I cannot help but deem the grackle
An ornithological debacle.
–Ogden Nash (1902 – 1971)

Pastoral
The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.
Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.
These things
astonish me beyond words.
—William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

Peckin’
The saddest thing I ever did see
Was a woodpecker peckin’ at a plastic tree.
He looks at me, and “Friend,” says he,
“Things ain’t as sweet as they used to be.”
—Shel Silverstein (1930 – 1999)

Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
—Thomas Hardy (1840 – 1928)

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
(Excerpt)
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
—Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

The Birds
The world begins again!
Not wholly insufflated
the blackbirds in the rain
upon the dead topbranches
of the living tree,
stuck fast to the low clouds,
notate the dawn.
Their shrill cries sound
announcing appetite
and drop among the bending roses
and the dripping grass.
—William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

The Black Swan
Black on flat water past the jonquil lawns
            Riding, the black swan draws
A private chaos warbling in its wake,
Assuming, like a fourth dimension, splendor
That calls the child with white ideas of swans
            Nearer to that green lake
        Where every paradox means wonder.

Though the black swan’s arched neck is like
            A question-mark on the lake,
The swan outlaws all possible questioning:
A thing in itself, like love, like submarine
Disaster, or the first sound when we wake;
            And the swan-song it sings
        Is the huge silence of the swan.

Illusion: the black swan knows how to break
            Through expectation, beak
Aimed now at its own breast, now at its image,
And move across our lives, if the lake is life,
And by the gentlest turning of its neck
            Transform, in time, time’s damage;
        To less than a black plume, time’s grief.
Enchanter: the black swan has learned to enter
            Sorrow’s lost secret center
Where like a maypole separate tragedies
Are wound about a tower of ribbons, and where
The central hollowness is that pure winter
            That does not change but is
        Always brilliant ice and air.

Always the black swan moves on the lake; always
            The blond child stands to gaze
As the tall emblem pivots and rides out
To the opposite side, always. The child upon
The bank, hands full of difficult marvels, stays
            Forever to cry aloud
        In anguish: I love the black swan.
—James Merrill (1926 – 1995)

Bird
It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air –
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography –
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.
— Pablo Neruda

A Barred Owl
The warping night air having brought the boom
Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room,
We tell the wakened child that all she heard
Was an odd question from a forest bird,
Asking of us, if rightly listened to,
“Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?”

Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear,
Can also thus domesticate a fear
And send a small child back to sleep at night
Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight
Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw
Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.
–Richard Wilbur (1921 – )

The Mocking-Bird
LIST to that bird! His song—what poet pens it?
Brigand of birds, he’s stolen every note!
Prince though of thieves—hark! how the rascal spends it!
Pours the whole forest from one tiny throat!
—Ednah Proctor (Clarke) Hayes (1833 – 1908)

The Mocking-Bird
THE NAME thou wearest does thee grievous wrong.
No mimic thou! That voice is thine alone!
The poets sing but strains of Shakespeare’s song;
The birds, but notes of thine imperial own!
—Henry Jerome Stockard (1858 – 1914)

Washing Day
The cormorants
hang their feathers
out to dry –
black velvet rags
showing threadbare
in the wind.
Like old women
living in the past,
they tend their
tattered finery
with talon fingers
and black
remembering eyes.
—Rita Summers

Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself
At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow…
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep’s faded papier-maché…
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry–It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.
—Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955)

Like They Say
Underneath the tree on some
soft grass I sat, I

watched two happy
woodpeckers be dis-

turbed by my presence. And
why not, I thought to

myself, why
not.
–Robert Creeley (1926 – )

The Man Who Swallowed a Bird
Happened when he was yawning.
A black or scarlet bird went down his throat
And disappeared, and at the time
He only looked foolish, belched a feather;
The change took time.

But when we saw him again in the
Half-dusk of a summer evening
He was a different man. His eyes
Glittered and his brown hands
Lived in the air like swallows;
Knowledge of season lit his face
But he seemed restless. What he said
Almost made sense, but from a distance:

            Once I swallowed a bird.
            Felt like a cage at first, but now
            Sometimes my flesh flutters and I think
            I could go mad for joy.

In the fall he vanished. South
Some said, others said dead. Jokes
About metamorphosis were made. Nonetheless,
Some of us hear odd songs.

Suppose
You press your ear against the morning air,
Above and on your left you might
Hear music that implies without a word
A world where a man can absorb a bird.
—David P. Young (1936 – )

The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
–William Carlos Williams (1883 – 1963)

Coming
On longer evenings,
Light, shill and yellow,
Bathes the serene
Foreheads of houses.
A thrush sings,
Laurel-surrounded
In the deep bare garden,
Its fresh-peeled voice
Astonishing the brickwork.

It will be spring soon,
It will be spring soon –
And I, whose childhood
Is a forgotten boredom,
Feel like a child
Who comes on a scene
Of adult reconciling,
And can understand nothing
But the unusual laughter,
And starts to be happy.
—Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985)

God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
       It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
       It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
       And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
       And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell; the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
        World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

Sumer is icumen in
Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweth sed and bloweth med
And springth the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteth after lomb,
Lhouth after calve cu
Bulloc sterteth, bucke ferteth.
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes thu, cuccu.
Ne swik thu naver nu!

Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!

Spring has come in
Loudly sing, cuckoo!
Grows the seed and blooms the meadow
And the wood springs now
Sing, cuckoo!

The ewe bleats after the lamb
The cow lows after the calf
The bull leaps, the buck leaps, twisting.
Merrily sing, cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo,
Well sing you, cuckoo.
Nor cease you ever now!

Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo!
Sing cuckoo now, sing cuckoo!
–Anonymous (c. 1260)
Translated by Craig E. Bertolet

The Throstle
‘Summer is coming, summer is coming,
  I know it, I know it, I know it.
Light again, leaf again, life again, love again!’
  Yes, my wild little Poet.
 
Sing the new year in under the blue,
  Last year you sang it as gladly.
‘New, new, new, new!’ Is it then _so_ new
  That you should carol so madly?
 
‘Love again, song again, nest again, young again,’–
  Never a prophet so crazy!
And hardly a daisy as yet, little friend;
  See, there is hardly a daisy.
 
‘Here again, here, here, here, happy year!’
  O warble unchidden, unbidden!
Summer is coming, is coming, my dear,
  And all the winters are hidden.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809 – 1892)

To Paint a Bird
First paint a cage
with an open door
then paint
something pretty
something plain
something elegant
something practical
for the bird
Then prop the canvas up against a tree
in a garden
in a wood
or in a forest
Hide behind the tree
without saying a word
without moving a muscle…
Sometimes the bird comes quickly
but he could equally well take years and years
before making up his mind
Don’t give up
wait
wait years if necessary
whether the bird comes quickly or slowly
has nothing to do with the picture’s success
When the bird comes
if he comes
keep absolutely quiet
wait for the bird to come into the cage
and when he’s in
gently shut the door with your brush
then
one by one paint out all the bars
taking care not to touch a single feather
Then paint the tree
choosing the finest branch for the bird
and paint all the green leaves and the wind’s freshness
the dust in the sunlight
and the noise of all the insects in the grass in the summer heat
and then wait for the bird to decide to sing
If the bird doesn’t sing
that’s a bad sign
a sign that the picture’s bad
but if he does sing that’s a good sign
a sign that you may sign
So now you very very gently pluck out
one of the bird’s feathers
and write your name in the corner of the picture.
—Jacques Prévert (1900 – 1977)
Translation by Anne Berkeley

The Owls
Within the shelter of black yews
The owls in ranks are ranged apart
Like foreign gods, whose eyeballs dart
Red fire. They meditate and muse.
 
Without a stir they will remain
Till, in its melancholy hour,
Thrusting the level sun from power,
The shade establishes its reign.
 
Their attitude instructs the sage,
Content with what is near at hand,
To shun all motion, strife, and rage.
 
Men, crazed with shadows that they chase,
Bear, as a punishment, the brand
Of having wished to change their place.
— Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867)
Transl. Campbell

Pied Beauty
Glory be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 – 1889)

Quartier Libre
I put my cap in the cage
and went out with the bird on my head
So
one no longer salutes
asked the commanding officer
No
one no longer salutes
replied the bird
Ah good
excuse me I thought one saluted
said the commanding officer
You are fully excused everybody makes mistakes
said the bird.
–Jacques Prévert (1900 – 1977)

Singapore
In Singapore in the airport,
A darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.
Her beauty and her embarrassment struggled together, and
neither could win.
She smiled and I smiled. What kind of nonsense is this?
Everybody needs a job.

Yes, a person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.
But first we must watch her as she stares down at her labor,
which is dull enough.
She is washing the tops of the airport ashtrays, as big as
hubcaps, with a blue rag.
Her small hands turn the metal, scrubbing and rinsing.
She does not work slowly, nor quickly, like a river.
Her dark hair is like the wing of a bird.

I don’t doubt for a moment that she loves her life.
And I want to rise up from the crust and the slop
and fly down to the river.
This probably won’t happen.
But maybe it will.
If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous, but only
the light that can shine out of a life.  I mean
the way she unfolded and refolded the blue cloth,
The way her smile was only for my sake; I mean
the way this poem is filled with trees, and birds.
—Mary Oliver

The Late Singer
Here it is spring again
and I still a young man!
I am late at my singing.
The sparrow with the black rain on his breast
has been at his cadenzas for two weeks past:
What is it that is dragging at my heart?
The grass by the back door
is stiff with sap.
The old maples are opening
their branches of brown and yellow moth-flowers.
A moon hangs in the blue
in the early afternoons over the marshes.
I am late at my singing.
–William Carlos Williams  (1883 – 1963)

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
–Wendell Berry (19934 -)

Song
A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.

There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
—Seamus Heaney

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
  
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
  
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile
–ee cummings (1894 – 1962)