The Poets’ Birds ~ The Red, Red Robins

 

Nothing sings Spring like a Robin, and nothing pleases me more than a Robin-rich season. Whether celebrating a first sighting, laughing over their antics as they try to pull worms from half-frozen ground, or luxuriating in their melodious song at sunrise and sunset, there’s something about their comfortable presence that evokes a sense of home.

Larks and nightingales play prominent roles in poetry, but robins have been celebrated as well. A member of the Thrush family, American Robins (Turdus migratorius) received their common name because of their resemblance to the British Robin (Erithacus rubecula), a smaller bird in the Chat family. Both birds are known for their pretty red breasts, and both are regarded with affection.

Emily Dickinson might have been watching a flighty bird like the one shown above when she wrote:

The Robin is the One
That interrupt the Morn
With hurried—few—express Reports
When March is scarcely on—

The Robin is the One
That overflow the Noon
With her cherubic quantity—
An April but begun—

The Robin is the One
That speechless from her Nest
Submit that Home—and Certainty
And Sanctity, are best

Observant and reflective as ever, Mary Oliver celebrated the Robin in her poem, “Such Singing in the Wild Branches.”

It was spring
and I finally heard him
among the first leaves––
then I saw him clutching the limb

in an island of shade
with his red-brown feathers
all trim and neat for the new year.
First, I stood still

and thought of nothing.
Then I began to listen.
Then I was filled with gladness––
and that’s when it happened,

when I seemed to float,
to be, myself, a wing or a tree––
and I began to understand
what the bird was saying,

and the sands in the glass
stopped
for a pure white moment
while gravity sprinkled upward

like rain, rising,
and in fact
it became difficult to tell just what it was that was singing––
it was the thrush for sure, but it seemed

not a single thrush, but himself, and all his brothers,
and also the trees around them,
as well as the gliding, long-tailed clouds
in the perfect blue sky–––all of them

were singing.
And, of course, so it seemed,
so was I.
Such soft and solemn and perfect music doesn’t last

For more than a few moments.
It’s one of those magical places wise people
like to talk about.
One of the things they say about it that is true

is that, once you’ve been there,
you’re there forever.
Listen, everyone has a chance.
Is it spring, is it morning?

Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?
Quick, then––open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Of course, the writers we call poets aren’t the only ones capable of celebrating the world and its creatures with rhythm and rhyme; singers and songwriters do the same. In 1926, Harry Woods wrote both words and music for a little gem called “When The Red, Red Robin Comes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along.”

Introduced by Sophie Tucker and later popularized by Al Jolson, it became a 1956 hit for Bing Crosby, and part of our family’s standard sing-along repertoire on road trips. Catchy and fun, it’s a perfect song for spring, and a perfect tribute to one of my favorite birds.

When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along, along,
There’ll be no more sobbin’ when he starts throbbin’ his old sweet song.

Wake up, wake up, you sleepy head!
Get up, get up, get out of bed!
Cheer up, cheer up, the sun is red!
Live, love, laugh, and be happy.

What if I ‘ve been blue?
Now I’m walkin’ through fields of flowers.
Rain may glisten but still I listen for hours and hours.

I’m just a kid again, doin’ what I did again, singin’ a song ,
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along.

What if I ‘ve been blue?
Now I’m walkin’ through fields of flowers.
Rain may glisten but still I listen for hours and hours.

I’m just a kid again, doin’ what I did again, singin’ a song,
When the red, red robin comes a-bob, bob, bobbin’ ,
When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along.

Comments always are welcome.

Transition

 

Spring’s
rising
waves now wash
o’er winter’s shore,
laving away loose
cold and broken remnants:
ice-limned rock; skeletons of
shell; dune-weary grasses torn and
tossed to float amid the spume; frothy
intimations of summer’s vibrant blooms.

 

Comments always are welcome.
For more information on the Etheree, a syllabic poem that in its basic form contains ten lines and a total of fifty-five syllables, please click here.

 

An Easter Journey

 

Faith
is the instructor.
We need no other.

Guess what I am,
he says in his
incomparably lovely

young-man voice.
Because I love the world,
I think of grass,

I think of leaves
and the bold sun,
I think of the rushes

in the black marshes
just coming back
from under the pure white

and now finally melting
stubs of snow.
Whatever we know or don’t know

leads us to say;
Teacher, what do you mean?
But faith is still there, and silent.

Then he who owns
the incomparable voice
suddenly flows upward

and out of the room
and I follow,
obedient and happy.

Of course I am thinking
the Lord was once young
and will never in fact be old.

And who else could this be, who goes off
down the green path
carrying his sandals, and singing?

 

                                          “Spring” ~ by Mary Oliver

 

As always, comments are welcome.

A Sublime Landscape

Some might consider it little more than a proverbial wide spot in the road, but Sublime, Texas — population seventy-five or so — has a post office, a Lutheran church founded in 1868, and some of 2021’s earliest bluebonnets.

Traveling west of town on Alternate Highway 90 last weekend, I began to see pastures and rangeland that were filling with flowers. Before long, those familiar reds and blues spread among the oaks will be joined by an extravagance of colorful yellows, pinks, and whites.

No one around Sublime minds a pure blue field, of course.

After all, this is the highway and these are the fields that gave rise to one of the loveliest tributes possible to our state wildflower, and our “sweet bluebonnet spring.”

You don’t have to be Texan to get a tear in your eye when you hear Emmylou and Willie sing Nanci Griffith’s “Gulf Coast Highway,” but if you are a Texan, you probably can’t help it. I know I can’t.

Comments always are welcome.

The Poets’ Birds: Red-Winged Blackbird

 

Like the thrilling call of a returning osprey, the song of the red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) announces an undeniable turn of season. Hear the song, and it’s not difficult to find the bird: defending territory or seeking a mate by displaying his brilliant red shoulder patches atop any convenient cornstalk, cattail, or branch.

The song, once heard, lingers in memory: evocative, freighted with unexpected meaning. For Welsh poet R.S.Thomas, a song similar in so many ways to the landscape of Wales — a little rough, a bit dark — gave rise to a simple and yet enjoyable poem.

Sometimes compared to the American poet Robert Frost, Thomas is less philosophical and less sanguine about the realities of rural life. Still, there’s little question that he absorbed those realities and transformed them in his own way, much as he imagines the blackbird’s song as a particularly pleasing alchemy.

It seems wrong that out of this bird,
Black, bold, a suggestion of dark
Places about it, there yet should come
Such rich music, as though the notes’
Ore were changed to a rare metal
At one touch of that bright bill.

You have heard it often, alone at your desk
In a green April, your mind drawn
Away from its work by sweet disturbance
Of the mild evening outside your room.

A slow singer, but loading each phrase
With history’s overtones, love, joy
And grief learned by his dark tribe
In other orchards and passed on
Instinctively as they are now,
But fresh always with new tears.

                                          “A Blackbird, Singing”  ~  R.S. Thomas

 

Comments always are welcome.
Click here for more information on poet R.S. Thomas.