a sure sign of spring
red stripes like glowing ensigns
the male marks his tree
Categories:
redwing, bird,
Form: Haiku
The trees clap hands as the birds gaily sing
The hope and joy that the new day will bring.
The redwing blackbird in the cattails hymns.
The fish keeps beat time as it jumps and swims.
Above clouds swim past in an ocean blue.
The sun warms the green grass and melts the dew.
The honeybees whiz past on their business
Passing by flowers in their accismus.
It is a good day to drift in the grass
And watch dainty butterflies as they pass.
Out in the tall grass the grasshoppers buzz.
The wind blows past the dandelion fuzz.
I remove the stalk of grass from my teeth
And dozing, pillow my head on the heath.
I have not a care in the world it seems
And my mind is only filled with good dreams.
Categories:
redwing, peace, summer,
Form: Quatrain
Spring Beauty and the Beast
Tenderly Spring sends harbingers of beauty,
Knights errant of crocus and snowdrops,
To warm winter’s shopworn heart
And soothe his brittle bones of barren boughs
With balms of long jonquil sunbeams
Melting the grumpy curmudgeon’s stronghold,
As pussy willows decorate his solstice doldrums
She watches snowflakes skate across thawing ponds.
Spring sends a redwing blackbird song
To lift Winter’s decrepit heart
In shy rhapsodies of new butterflies and lady bugs
Engaging Winter’s gloomy frown
Into transcendent blue-eyed welkins like Forget-Me-Nots
Then chants déjà vu in veils of daffodils
As spritely Sweet Peas adorn
Winter’s faded doorstep.
Beauty soothes the beast
Touching the ice-blue armor of his heart
With Hyacinth whispers
And sighs of zephyrs like a fluffy Snowball;
In the Lilac scent of a new equinox
Winter dozes wrapped in Spring’s enchantment
As she sings lullabies of reminiscent hibernation
Until he strides past halcyon autumn shadows again.
2-24-23
Contest: In Bloom
Sponsor: Joseph May
Categories:
redwing, flower, life, love, spring,
Form: Personification
There lies a way to heaven by that lake,
My sickness gone, I fear no chilly mist;
A redwing calls me, dawn is now awake,
The fragrant autumn air I can't resist.
There is my home far from this cottage small,
Where honeysuckles with gold aspens mate,
And purple sweetgums love their mother Fall,
Oblivious of their harsh wintry fate.
November Rain! Your icy arrows smart
Those scarlet berries on the woody hill.
Let the thrush sing once more till I depart,
Let his mellifluous throat subtly trill.
True is this blazing hue— October's art,
A timeless souvenir stashed in my heart.
10th November, 2019
New Fall Sonnets Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Emile Pinet
Categories:
redwing, nature,
Form: Sonnet
Things are quiet here, a friend writes
in the first email of his long life:
Most mornings I drive to Gillson Park,
sit and read beside the Lake.
The waves are a symphony.
Books are better there. Sometimes
a redwing blackbird will attack,
protecting its nest. The weather's
cool and there's rain at night.
It's not summer in Chicago
as you and I remember it.
I have a cell phone now too
and I use it all the time.
The landline's just a holdover
from the good old days.
Speaking of holdovers,
we should get together
while we still can.
At our age, who knows
how long either of us has.
People our age drop dead
without too much ado.
Tell you what: Whoever gets sick first
will notify the other one who'll take
a plane and race death to see
who arrives at the bedside first.
If I'm talking to a priest, wait outside.
Forget the small stuff like amputations.
They have prosthetics now for everything
except for tallywhackers.
Who needs more kids anyway.
My wife will send you an email if I die.
Ask your wife to do the same for me.
Donal Mahoney
Categories:
redwing, age,
Form: Blank verse
Pokeweed waits
underground, snow crusts
small greenish white flowers, leaves entire
and alternate, black berries
poisonous, ripe late.
Waits patiently past February
when the sun stays up in the sky more than January
and six more months after that
past the peepers keeping watch
for every passing dog or truck.
We await our time
or have had it, or are having it.
Body in slow, not precipitous, decline.
Expend ourselves on work and wine.
Percent of budget expended, year to date.
I heard a redwing this morning
who might have been choosing a nest site
holding the spot against chevrons from the south.
Choosing the best site, away from predators, near water,
in sight of seed and buds.
It happens that when the pokeweed fruit pokes out
the chicks were born, the fledglings flown
leaves already leathery
and the weather has the faintest
hint of January's cold snow hold.
Categories:
redwing, flower, fruit, january, morning,
Form: Verse
First person singular prohibited. In order
to be more crow.
War! war! war! war! war!
Then there's that lowland wetland bird
around the stunted red pines crying
Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy.
Hear the redwing blackbird chirring
Her, her, her... she
as one might expect, Spring.
Words for birds
since they're inaccessible. Aim
binoculars left, right, up, down, missing every time.
At the piano recital
Aaron made the penguins run, run, run, not waddle,
from a hungry polar bear!
Everything passes, even a massacre,
but birds outlast cars
and words like chemical and holocaust.
Woodpecker climbs oak,
Connecticut.
Not one neighbor heard the knocking.
The voice of a pewee
whose nest has fallen out of the tree.
Oh my! Oh me!
What did the wood thrush sing
that summer evening
teaching its young thrush meanings?
Categories:
redwing, bird, cry, holocaust, spring,
Form: Verse
Dolichonyx Oryzivorus
spiritus lapsae
Spring has come.
Redwings in marshes,
declaring ownership of
reeds!
Rice Birds!
Dolichonyx Oryzivorus!
Bobolinks!
Redwing cousins,
hopping in the yard;
more up than along!
Long thinking, along;
maybe I'm wrong?
Bobolink singing,
more up than along!
Categories:
redwing, joy,
Form: Blank verse
Cedarville, Route 29, we drive
these country roads reckless
as late spring, stopping
where farm folks sell iris cheap
in extravagant colors – Redwing,
Tollgate, Lavender Exchange –
from fields like the ones
our young dogs love to run.
Triangle Crossroads, Hayfork
Junction. We stuff the trunk
with bags of hunched brown hope.
Back home, tubers dig down
to where we’ve planted
the old dogs,
the ones who used to come
when bidden, and now,
as if commanded, stay.
Categories:
redwing, animals, death, nature, ,
Form: Free verse