The Silver Song
(a 55)
I don't remember when
the Black Fear came; it seems
it's always been here, a broken
rotted smell under the floor,
invisible but disruptive
as catching on fire.
Bright-piercing in the night-oak,
a bird too small to see
sings quicksilver notes.
Which more unexpected,
that it sings at all,
or that I hearing it
rejoice?
September 2023
%20Blue%20Tit.jpg)
posted for Fireblossom's Desperately Different (the unexpected)
Images: Untitled (Blurred Figure) ©Zdzisław Beksiński Fair Use
Blue Tit, ©Karl Martens Fair Use
I always love a poem with a bird in it. I love the question this poem asks - one to ponder. I think both are equally lovely.
ReplyDeleteI can so relate with these lines Joy. Some things lay low and then rise above the water line to show their face. Your imagery is potent and amazing. A short poem that says so much! I love this!
ReplyDeleteThe opening stanza reminded me of a type of formula one racing fuel that burns without showing a flame--all you can see is the waves in the air from the heat if it ignites. (I am full of tidbits of useless knowledge.) That aside, your poem reminds me of something I read in a novel once--"Before & After" IIRC--in which one of the characters tells another who is grieving that you can't keep happiness out forever any more than you can keep sorrow out forever. The pendulum always seems to swing back when it has swung to far either way, and something so slight as the song of some miraculous tiny bird is still enough to move it. I love this 55, Joy.
ReplyDeleteDelightful. A song to pierce the night and the dark may be unexpected for sure...but the idea that the joy in hearing it pierces your own shadow is stunning.
ReplyDeleteWith the lead square on Black Fear, I take the silver lining in the bird's song as this making of it, "bright-piercing in the night oak." There are melodies in the maladies, maladroit despite the malodorousness. Or because of it. In what i now take as early petic mal seizure activity (which flourished decades later), that smell was in the boughs of my Mitch McConnell freeze, like rotten roses. A feral 55 from a potent shelf of the biblioteque -- the silver siren who sings whatelseareyagonnado.
ReplyDeleteThose last four lines are perfect. And the black fear...eww, always there, under the floor. I miss 55's!!
ReplyDeleteOoh, I love this little tale you tell! And that "bright-piercing" bird. Especially love the 2nd and final stanza with the insightful question you ask! :-)
ReplyDeleteBlack fear and then relief comes in the shape of a bird's song. As said above, a short poem that says so much, it has the universality of all the best poems and as always your talent for original imagery shines. JIM
ReplyDelete