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Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

joybragi84
Dec 31, 20222 min read

A Cardinal Poem with a Bit of an Edge


Singing a Note of Warning


I see you perched and nestled tight

Above the wispy powdered snow

In one small beam of waning light

Hid in a bush where winds won’t blow.


The winter shrub, still leafy green,

Provides a screen from icy gusts

But your red coat is clearly seen

Among its grays and olive rusts.


Sit still, masked bird, the sun is bright

And blinds the eyes of blinking owls,

But when the day recedes to night,

Pay heed to all the hoots and howls.


This early morning when I woke,

I heard a horned owl’s deep bass, “Who?”

He called for supper as he spoke

And said a fat songbird will do.


The wind is not the only foe

Whose flight is silent in night’s air.

I cannot tell if you should go,

But, please, my friend, Beware! Beware!


Holy cow! It has been ten days since I have posted anything. I hope none of my readers were sitting out there twiddling their thumbs and waiting for me to post something. Your thumb muscles would be massive by now. However, I have offered excuses before, and I don't really feel like it anymore. I think that we can have an understanding. If I am not posting blogs, it's because I am not writing. All of the other excuses will always be the same.

The picture that accompanies the poem was taken from the window in our "big room" that, I suppose, one might say is my office. I think that the bird is one of the Cardinal brothers from the previous blog post. It was around -4 degree Fahrenheit when I took the picture. You folks remember those cold days. No! They were just last week--or was it two weeks ago. I am back to wearing shorts on my daily walks!

Anyhow, as I am writing nature poems/songs and putting them together, I notice that there seems to be a very nature-is-always-good-and-happy type of vibe. Well, nature is not always good and happy. This poem was another of those "good and happy" ones, but I stopped myself. "Can we at least have some element of danger?" I asked myself.

"Sure," I quickly responded to the other voice of me.

Well, that meant some rewriting. I think it ended up being all right without being too sappy and happy. What do you think? Please let me know by typing into the comment box wherever it shows up on your device. As always, ENJOY!

Comments

I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

Our faulty elder poets sacrificed the passion and passionate flow of poetry to the subtleties of intellect and to the stars of wit; the moderns to the glare and glitter of a perpetual, yet broken and heterogeneous imagery, or rather to an amphibious something, made up, half of image, and half of abstract meaning. The one sacrificed the heart to the head; the other both heart and head to point and drapery.-S. T. Coleridge

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats

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