Saturday, February 24, 2018

My Inner Bird


Original artwork by Marion Syme
for Clayoquot Eclectic


My inner bird is, perhaps,
the raven with her gobble-cry,
or maybe the cheep of a small sparrow.
Perhaps a mourning dove.

How many times can the heart break?
As many times as are required of us.
I turn on the news.
The young are rising.
Thank God.

Children are still dying.
There was Sandy Hook one Christmas;
now it is years later
and the children are still dying.
How are we adults to bear
the world we have created
for the young?

My inner bird must be
a tough old bird,
because we’re still here,
still outraged,
and our hearts still fire with hope
when the young raise their voices
and speak their painful truth
- our painful truth -
to corrupt power.

My inner bird
shrieks with a pain
I cannot release
for fear the walls will tumble.
All identifiable walls have tumbled
but, thankfully,
there is cement and mortar,
and willing hands
to help us
build them up again.


For Kerry’s prompt at Real Toads: to write a poem as a one-sided conversation to a disinterested audience. The governmental audience is certainly disinterested, in anything but their own agenda.

Also shared with the Poetry Pantry at Poets United.


33 comments:

  1. A tough old bird but one that has not forgotten how to sing.

    Thanks for your thoughts, Sherry. I am sure they will not be unheard.

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  2. a heart will break until it's final beat - then the silence will embrace and in the aftermath, we hear the pain - know it for the truths it speaks - and when we rise from the ashes, we are stronger for it ....

    very reflective piece - filled with the anger and despair, but also the strength born of resilience, carried on the lighted wings of hope and promise

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  3. Your voice is strong, unwavering ~ we need more. Your inner bird soars.

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  4. An old standby, "Where there's a will there's a way," your post. Nice. Time, though hasn't been on our side. Hang tight. !!
    ..

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  5. Sigh we need to be strong.. love the hope of "young rising"..💖

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  6. Your inner bird has a powerful voice! May it be heard. And may the powerful rising voices of the outraged young be effective too.

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  7. Yes, the young are rising again. It cannot happen soon enough. May they rise, and may they inspire us to rise as well. We have been complacent and silent too long.

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  8. How many times can the heart break?
    As many times as are required of us.

    Beautiful lines.

    Time to take a stand and create some change!

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  9. Rise up, my friend. I am glad that the young ones want their voices heard by the government as well as by the common people. Have seen the news and I am filled with hope the way these youngsters demand their rights.

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  10. Maybe the young ones will redeem the souls of our generation that doesn't seem to be leaving them a better world. May their voices make the difference.

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  11. I always feel so helpless as all I do is write poems read by believers or offer a few dollars well intended but just a pittance compared with developers and financiers wiles. But I do it so that I can hold my head up high even though I am just one of a few that care.

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  12. I have so much hope in the young. I'll gladly follow their lead and support them.

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  13. well said, Sherry. may the bird carry on the tough fight without fear.

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  14. It's interesting to me that you capture so well what's going on in the U.S., even though you write from Canada, where guns are not venerated as they are here. Thank you for the hope with which this poem ends.

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  15. Indeed, there are willing hands trying to build it again. And, that is what matters - we must keep hope and the efforts ongoing.

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  16. Beautiful write, Sherry! My inner bird is the Raven, too!

    It's the bird that is an agent of change and a source of strong medicine in the Native American traditions of the American Northwest.

    It's also a trickster, like coyote! ;)

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  17. You write about what we really don't like to look at. I know it is very difficult.

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  18. I think us bird people see the overview perspective. The kindred crow is my totem bird, discovered during shamanic drumming years ago.

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  19. I say youth is never wasted on the young. Happy that hope is still alive

    Thanks for dropping by my Sunday Standard today Sherry

    Much💖love

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  20. Oh wow this is so powerful Sherry....it seems we are both raising our voices with theirs....I am not sure I have a totem bird, but hawk seems to always be hovering around me...The Messenger!

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  21. I do think we have a lot of resilience... that inner bird is a tough one to stand all this.

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  22. It’s one and two degrees of separation for us. Our community. Heartbroken over this.

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  23. How wonderful to have an inner bird, Sherry! I think I'd quite like to be a blackbird. I like that you have written this poem to the children who have died and are still dying, and I especially like the lines:
    'My inner bird must be
    a tough old bird,
    because we’re still here,
    still outraged,
    and our hearts still fire with hope
    when the young raise their voices
    and speak their painful truth
    - our painful truth -'

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  24. I, too, am impressed with the young voices from Florida. God help them make a difference the adults didn't make!

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  25. You GO GIRL! Fly with that inner bird...
    ZQ

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  26. I like the defiance in this. We must support our young, take flight and fight.

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  27. The way that you have pinned this 'call' against the sounds of birds is intriguing and rather remarkable, I think. We tend to see birds as quite fragile, compared to man. And yet, when you watch birds you soon realize that they are far more attuned to danger - or even the prospect of danger. That paradigm, gave me pause when I read this piece. So much of life on this planet is far more perceptive and responsive to what is going on around them, than we humans are.

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  28. Here on the internet, we can fly around the world and never leave home, yet our voices are heard and even remembered...Really like your poem, Sherry

    Elizabeth

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  29. There was also VA Tech...one that affected me personally and deeply. We almost had fun laws changed in VA but the NRA stepped in. Hopefully this time lawmakers will be held accountable. Many have never even read the 2nd amendment of the Constitution...They only know. "The right to bear arms". But preceding those words in order to months a militia...changed the game a bit.

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  30. a hopeful pen. I think you are both tough and tender, Sherry ~

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  31. Tough battle scarred old birds are needed to lead the battle:)

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  32. Lets hope the young are wiser than their elders. We started out so well. What happened?

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  33. I am quite impressed with the voices that we NEED to hear - these teenagers need to keep at it and big business will hopefully - finally - be toppled. Let's hope greed and $ have met their match!

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