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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
Jun 302 min read

Bluebird Pugilist: The Poem-a-Week Challenge and Seeking Some Help


Bluebird Pugilist

 

BAM! BAM! BAM!

 

The bluebird rams the window with his chest.

Tick! Tick! He strikes the glass pane with his beak.

He acts like he’s a champion pugilist

Who's training to defend a winning streak.

 

For hours, I watch him parry, bob, and thrust,

Then sit on a near limb and pant for breath.

He’s left some bloody smudges tinged with dust.

It seems he thinks this fight is to the death.

 

I wish that I could stop you, Little Blue.

Your enemy is formed of double-glass.

He never needs to rest, and, unlike you,

He does not feel the pain of every pass.

 

He’s only a reflection of a bird,

A fowl that looks, no is, the soul of you.

His battle cry, I know you’ve never heard

Unless the window echoes your song too.

 

And now, you sit exhausted in your nest,

Too tired to gather straw and help your mate.

You should give up this fight, blue pugilist.

You’ll never best this foe till it’s too late.


I had no success getting a picture of the little guy who has been ramming my window for the last two weeks, but I did get a picture of his mate. I really don't see how the bird survives. One day last week while I was in a marathon grading session, the male bluebird spent more than two hours fighting his reflection in the window glass. I chased him off a couple of times, but he kept coming back. I did have a little mirror hanging on the patio post for him to fight, and I thought that it was broken by hail during a storm one day last year. Now, I think that the battling bluebird might have broken it. He is viciously territorial.


I got the proof copy of Uncle Boog and other Dewey Lynn Stories. Here is a picture of the cover:


I have only just started with my proofing, but if you feel like getting a campaign started to help me get this book "out there," if you have some ideas that you would like to try, especially you younger folks who know about TikTok, Instagram, and other social media sources, please let me know. I am not a bad hand with technology, but I do not have much knowledge of social media and how to use it effectively.


Anyhow, ENJOY the poem! Keep your eyes and ears open for the eventual release of this book and a self-contained Uncle Boog book. I have a proof copy of that on its way too.


Don't forget! Essential Words: Nature, Imagination, and Inspiration can be purchased at Lulu.com, and I still have fourteen copies. Not a big seller, so far! :(



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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