Ode to a Sparrow

Often at the turn of the year, I find myself inspired to re-memorize some of the 30 poems I’ve worked on reciting over the years. So today I turned to two Shakespeare sonnets and Robert Frost’s classic Stopping by Woods. The words of all three mostly tumbled back into the right neural connections. Except for the prepositions. Those are the killers. Even typing over Frost’s title, I had to pause: “Is it really stopping by woods? Or in woods?”

Outside on the deck was a sparrow looking in our back window and without effort, a little poem formed itself, riding on the back of the rhythmic and rhymed verse I was immersed in.

It ain’t Shakespeare or Frost, but it felt good to write. And so the Poem Du Jour:

A bird sat on a flowerpot

Her tail a’quivering, her body not.

She gazed upon our Christmas tree.

Then turned around and looked at me.

‘What is she thinking?’ pondered I,

‘Does she wonder who, what, why?’

She stared once more, then flew away,

Leaving me to start my day.

Where she went, I do not know.

What she’ll do or where she’ll go.

With her beak upon a tree

Perhaps she’ll write a poem for me.