Bullfinches Are Too Beautiful to Acknowledge Loss

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Dedicated to Nikolai Klyuev and Sergei  Yesmenin together

The magpies with their clacking chatter think

Of autumn now.  They do not think of May.

They never think of blooms, of reverent pink

Of peonies so sacred in the fray

Of petal edges of esthetics.  Bugs

And worms are more the magpies’ burden.  Eggs

Of spring are far away.  One magpie tugs

At rubber of an earthworm.  Stilt-like legs

Gain traction and the gulp goes down.  The stretch

Might be quite beautiful from certain views

But ugliness from view of chomped, that wretch.

In jazz the peasants know of only blues.

  The peasants are not sparrows.  Orphans sing

    But not of Easter, sorrow on the wing.

Bing Videos bullfinch singing

© Phillip Whidden