A Day With Blackbirds

 

The day erased the blackboard of dark but the gray streaks stayed
and the blackbirds pried open the‎ 90% chance of snow. Their beaks lost and searching across an unforgiving sheet of restraint. How I wish I had a troop of actors,

dancers, wine & cheesemakers enroute. My heart is too loud on this rocky hill where anger

always pushes love aside. No thing crosses the hill but solitude, so tightly wrapped that
nothing slips from underneath its stiff garments. These are the days when I search
for the promise of angels and listen to the ice stretch and crack into bass notes on the river.
I cannot find a soul to talk to & sometimes I am afraid that I will look & not even find a soul.
The blackbirds scratch casually, one bony leg against the other, while staring straight ahead.
They are almost statues and sometimes their silhouettes become black cardboard against the snow

and I can almost believe they are leaving. Some days I can almost want them not to go.
Why should I resent them so? Poor bony cut out birds despairing snow, dispersing their
pathetic path of tiny feet across the snow. My little effigies with long bent tails, humbly cold,
and caught in a search, longing for food they cannot unearth. I change my mood to see
them cold. I almost want them not to go.

Reviews

[Emily B]

it's perfect, line length and everything

[Shalini Dinesh]

Beautiful poem but lines are little lengthy, otherwise beautifully words.

[The Rock And Roll Cowbo..]

We never want to lose those in our life who inspire and motivate us... but as long as we hold them in our heart they will always be there.

[Ken Simm.]

A piece of contrasts. Superbly written and developed.

[Greg the Bard]

While stationed in England during the 1970's I found that the cold was as hard to live in as any place could be. I fell in love with the country and the people but the cold is something that stays in your mind years after the event. We used to joke that the color of war was red but it wasn't. The real color was black. This work reminds me of that black. These birds are the black in my mind. It never goes away. I will go to my grave with that color on my mind.

[Ed Hart]

you always open windows and let reality in with your magic touch

[Fabian G. Franklin]

They are messengers of the spirit...those blackbirds...they were messengers to Vincent when he painted Crows in a Wheatfield...and The Raven said to Poe..."Nevermore"... they stalk the grass strutting in their black tuxedos; onyx eyes peering at our world and shining with mischief as a carved smile stretches along their yellow beaks...I see them often in the graveyards...sometimes I want to shoot at them and other times I want to feed them...maybe we are all only scavengers of some sort and they are the more noble for their forthrightness. I've always been unnerved by the resounding echo of "CAW".