Tag: birds

Balcony Poems: Embracing Nature’s Melodies

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I sat on my balcony and listened to the blackbird leading the dawn chorus. In the early morning hours, I wrote this poem. I find birdsong so joyous! It uplifts and gives me a sense of freedom.

I sit on the balcony, the moon
not shining in a miner's coal sky.

The birds must know something.
They sing with voices looped

around my breath's plume; pale –
a ghost, an albino wren; its beak 

submerged in a lake. A blackbird 
is a piccolo; your smooth hands 

silkworms, spinning skeins on my 
breasts. Your breath, a warm breeze

at the nape of my neck. The white 
dove's wings are flutters in my chest

as I stargaze; I look for your heart. 
I see your lips in the blackbird's

song. Your whispers beguile me,
is that so wrong?

©2023 Sarah Drury

Poetic Reflections on Time and Nature

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Death of a swift

I am a clock.
How many chimes
until I am

a swift?
A blackbird?
This is a fine song.

I weave blue ribbons
in my hair to catch 
dragonflies. 

Their lace wings
shroud my eyes.
A womb gorged 

with embryos waits
til the next time 
I die.


©2024 Sarah Drury

A Bluebird in 8 Ways

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A BLUEBIRD IN EIGHT WAYS
                           ~ After Wallace Stevens
 
I

A poet is a bluebird
who drizzles the sky
with indanthrene songs 

II

I am making words
out of the bluebird’s tongue,
littered on the paper 
like a rejection letter.

III

The bluebird looks at me
with its reticent eye - 
wants to sprinkle lies
in the blackbird’s ear.

IV

I have no time for cheats.
Bluebirds are full of infidelity,
wagging their sweet 
little tails at the worms.

V

I know a fine song
if it licks my heels.
I smile and my breast heaves
at the fortissimo.

VI

When the bluebird flies away
the chicks’ chasm-jaws 
snatch at a stopped watch.

VII

The snow dusts the blue wings.
Makes snow angels on the ice.
I fall, my womb a pomegranate.

VIII

I never did fit in a box.
Too big dreams for a small forest.
No blackbirds with carbon plumage.
I want diamonds. 

Copyright © Sarah Drury 2022


Wallace Stevens, (1954), 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' from The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York. Random House.


Images by krstnwatts0 and Johnny Gunn from Pixabay