a bird exists inside this five-foot box
made for beak and wing, miked for flying
acoustics to record. More music-box
than detention centre, oscine than vying
gulls pursuing some flung chip. Now trying
by bird-bloke translation a memo shows
that only this metaphor released knows
poetry’s mystery – why squeeze wild thought
into tiny containers? So nearly broken,
to high headland climbs our poet overwrought.
Leads unplugged, the top I slowly open
and peer inside this padded cell hopin’
for an answer. While wild waves crash hard below
imagined wings departed long ago.
Image – Oval-shaped fusee-driven movement by Jaquet-Droz & Leschot, ca. 1790. by Jafd88 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. Written for dverse, the poets’ pub where Frank has asked us to write a Chaucerian verse (this ain’t one).
Peter Frankis writes 
Good question why we squeeze thought into tiny containers. Perhaps because there is pleasure in doing so and in seeing it done?
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What a feast of words and thoughts.
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Thank you.
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Many thanks Ros – glad you liked it.
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Impressive, complex poem, yet it has a light tone and the rhymes work really well…loving the ending.
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Terrific! As detailed and intricate in movement as the mechanism. The poem and the poet are one!
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Gorgeous metaphor which bursts through at the beginning of the second stanza. Excellent!
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Love the thought you have as well as the struggle to make it work.
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SMILING I AM! Very late to the reading of Thursday’s posts….but SO glad I’m reading yours. Hmmmm YESSSS….as a free-verse kind of gal, that’s exactly what I feel like when I have to start counting syllables on my fingers…and then add accented beats into the mix…and they looking up rhyming words that don’t sound like “roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you”….HAH! This is the perfect metaphor. Soooo well done! 🙂
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