Tuesday, September 6, 2011

I'm re-posting this; it's my first ever attempt at an ode; I'm not usually attracted to form, 
so it was a break from my normal free verse mode.. 

Ode To a High Flyer

My chirpy friend, your urgent voice
at first concerns, then I rejoice!
It's you, it's you, oh feathered one
patterned with bars of golden sun
and black as if singed by summer fire
and yet your voice is a veritable choir.

Urgent, you chirp, and swoop for gnat
Is this your greeting? Have you seen a cat?
Another swoop under the shade cloth's net
- a clean sweep with each pirouette.
As fast as you hunt and eat what you catch
I'm too humanly slow to be any match.

You dash, my friend, to higher perches
your days spent in these frenetic searches
for supremely delicate morsels too slow
to escape your arrowed flight, and shadow.
I stop my work, enthralled as you call
and amaze at the way you triumphantly trawl.

Yet you care not; what should I expect?
No more than those unfortunate insects
whose lives are short and shorter still
because you harvest, eat your fill.
You're not an especially social creature
are you, my sunny honeyeater?


Jennie Fraine 2011

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