Sonnet – a different blue

New_Holland_Honeyeater_(Phylidonyris_novaehollandiae)_(15048717286)-2

Face it, nothing here will be sharper, clearer.
There’s no better brighter waiting below.
Blue (or amethyst, say) has been rhapsodied away. Post-everything,
blue’s a pantone code, a filter on a sub-pixel flickering.

Besides, what do I mean when I write (for example)
of the new holland honeyeater atop the laurel
surveying the early blue – loudly tchilk tchilk pseet –
yellow-winged boldly streak black ‘n white tail to beak?

Had I the gift, this particular bird I’d write, so you too
(in your russet, saffron, day-glo or ‘believable’ blue)
would smile at the pugnacious way
of a tiny bird first up checking the day.

The surfers are blind in this bright monochrome
but still they sense the energy, a way off but coming on.

Image:  by Patrick_K59 [CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons (detail). A sonnet for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads where Kim is hosting and asks us to write on a colour of our choice. And here’s some more on the bird – one of the first ‘(re)named’ by Joseph Banks back on the Endeavour expedition in 1770. Of course, the bird had been know to the First Australians for thousands of years and was called by many names – including Jingee, in Western Australia. And here’s Miles with another kind of blue

24 thoughts on “Sonnet – a different blue”

  2. New Holland Honey Eaters commandeered our bird bath and were quite fearless of man (me) and other birds. I’ve moved on from that house but your sonnet was a delighful reminder of those halcyon days a few years back.

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  5. Thank you for the snippet of Miles Davis and his kind of blue to illuminate your different blue, Peter.
    I like the way you directly addressed me, the reader, and made me sit up to your ‘sharper, clearer’ blue. I love the wordplay in the line:
    ‘Blue (or amethyst, say) has been rhapsodied away…’
    and sense of dazzling colour in the lines:
    ‘The surfers are blind in this bright monochrome
    but still they sense the energy, a way off but coming on’.

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  6. In the first stanza I feel that we should not expect anything better below… as we should be like the bird enjoying the blue (or any color we have) instead of dreaming of the ultimate blue in the end… maybe it’s just my thinking, but your writing made me think.

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  8. Ah, such sharp images in this sonnet — I love how you involved the reader in this display with that pugnacious smile. The blue can be of multitudes like you say, “in your russet, saffron, day-glo or ‘believable’ blue”. One can sense the energy of it, after all.
    -HA

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  10. This is a wonderful sweeping song – a tribute to the colour and the bird, and as others of noted, the directness of the wording, the approach, really pulls us in, in a very intimate, take note fashion. Lovely sonnet!

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