Today’s poem is “Bird” by Emily Blair Stribling. Her poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, Chicago Review, Poets On, and she’s the author of the chapbook The Mercy of Light. She lives on a small farm in Brooklin, Maine.
She writes, “The natural world gives me language and inspires me to unleash the light as well as the shadows. Maine has given me a home. In this poem, I spotted a hummingbird just outside my office window and was struck by how much life is contained in one small word.”
Bird
by Emily Blair Stribling
That such a small word
could contain so many feathers
and songs, and all that down,
white and grey dreamed-of-softness,
not to mention
legs, and beaks and eyes,
nestled like tiny jewels
among the fluff.
Then there are those little hearts,
keeping time for all those songs
that will cross oceans,
light on mountain tops
sweeten the lives of lonely stars,
only to return home
to nest in one small word.
Poem copyright © 2018 Emily Blair Stribling.