The bird in the photo is the American Goldfinch, which is, by the way, the state bird in New Jersey where I live. I remember learning that fact in grade school. Years later, I saw a lot of these colorful birds at my dad’s bird feeders which he filled with nigel seed, a favorite with finches. Dad no longer keeps up with the bird feeding, but I still spotted a goldfinch this season in the shrubbery.
Just for fun, here is the soundtrack of a goldfinch’s song.
This was written for Linda Kruschke’s paint chip poetry challenge. The challenge this week was to write a stanza or more of a sixain, using four or five of the paint chip words below and one as a rhyming word.
The poem was partially inspired by a story my mother told me that she had read about the actress Helen Hayes and her romance. At one point in her courtship, the man who became her husband gave her a bag of peanuts (maybe at the movies or some event) and told her he wished they were emeralds. Years later, he did give her emeralds and told her he wished they were peanuts. In my poem, peanuts and emeralds became ice cream cone and polished or precious stone. All other details were also fictionalized and, of course, created, to fit in the paint chip words.
This poem was written for a dVerse Poetics challenge, where we were challenged to choose one of 12 minimalistic photos by Glenn A. Buttkus for poetic inspiration. Glenn is a poet who contributes to dVerse challenge and also has a site for his minimalistic photography.
This was written for Colleen M. Chesebro’s Tanka Tuesday challenge. We were challenged to write a syllabic poem inspired by the artistic photo shown. I was inspired both by the photo and this bit of information I found on http://www.ancient-wisdom.com, “The ancientPolynesiansnavigated their canoes by the stars and other signs that came from the ocean and sky. Navigation was a precise science, a learned art that was passed on verbally from one navigator to another for countless generations.” I decided then to make reference to a Polynesian bird.
This is for dVerse’s Monday quadrille challenge. By their definition, a quadrille is a poem with exactly 44 words. Our poems had to include the word “smudge.”
