Hey everybody! So here's my first contribution:
Sonnet LXXXII
She used to hold me closely in her wings,
And tell me that she’d keep me safe from harm.
O, Meadowlark, I long to hear you sing,
To feel your feathers brush against my arms.
But as the days have turned to months and years
,I find myself forgetting how she sounds.
That spiteful voice- I somehow long to hear
Is buried in my thoughts, but can’t be found.
I’ve tried, so long, to put her out of mind,
To make the pain release me from its grips.
Do I move on and leave her voice behind,
Or do I wait to hear it from her lips?
That cold goodbye that I have never heard,
When Meadowlark did leave her baby bird.
Hey Kirsten, besides being a proud uncle and fellow writer, I'm deeply touched by this personal poem. Your dad is more than a 'birder' and thus more than an imaginer of meadowlarks. I saw (no glib allusion) Meadowlark Lemon play at the old Chicago ampitheatre where Michael Jordan first cut his shoes. He was and is my favorite Globetrotter, an ambassador for my favorite sport, and now I have a poem that makes me think of him more. But, as art does, I think of you more and all of what you value, and value that all the more. My longest friend here in Prague taught me something of the verb 'to long' (he applied it to a Czech writer we both like very much, Ivan Klima), and as Shakespeare does in his sonnets--repeat the key word twice--you massage this subtle verb as a vital touchstone, a perch-times-two upon a peregrination, however meadowlarks may do that.
ReplyDeleteAnd as you peregrinate to Prague next month, keep Meadowlark in mind--your poem, my hero, all that Stillwater unleashes in our imagination.
love, Dan