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Friday 15 June 2007

Miner's Finch -- by DoctorShoot

(This was originally posted as a comment on the Goldfinch poem, but I felt it deserved its own perch.. Z)

-

the miner's finch
wild canary
never a single flinch
nor note of song

believes in destiny as much
as those whose dynamite replaces
hammer and tap
and stretches against the natural grain
for one more chance to signify
all clear
at the beginning and end of the mortal chain,

or waiting forever against the supervisor's wall,
or in an abandoned lunchroom
midst the gritty wrappers of last week's fare
for one more chance at least
to prove
the worth of her captivity

-

39 comments:

DoctorShoot said...

thank you zeph
cheers
doc

file said...

I can't let you be the only one to comment on your own thread, even if it was posted behind your back by our very own iron lady

I am very happy to say that I can understand this and therefore enjoy it immensely

talking softly and carrying a big stick

the denouement is delicously set up and a powerful, poignant, line too

liked it, like it, will continue to like it

thanks shoooot, thanks benito (zepherini)

Anonymous said...

File, what's with the 'iron lady' stuff? Not comparing me with M Thatch (hiss, spit) I hope? :)

Doc, you know I think this is a lovely poem - truthful and touching.

file said...

sorry z, I meant, of course, Ion Lady

file said...

(hack, fart)

Anonymous said...

Surely, you meant the Zion lady?

Anonymous said...

Even more dangerous!

I see myself more as the concierge of this site, lurking somewhere in a dingy office and waddling out in a disgruntled manner to post poems for the browbeaten inhabitants.

Or, of course, the elegant Muse of this dazzling salon.

Depending on my mood.

Anonymous said...

I wake at 3
It should be night
It’s light
In northern climes
We live on different times

It is not finches singing me to life
It’s horrid herring-gulls that screech
Bird song should teach
Gulls cut like a knife

file said...

mims,

that's great; power, grace and incisions

Anonymous said...

Thank you file - means a lot coming from a wordsmith such as yourself. I do much chirpy and superficial but that was thought out carefully, and I appreciate your words.

Anonymous said...

That's nice, Mimi, precise and it has something to say. More please!

Are you in arctic summer now, then?

I rather like gulls myself but the herring ones are a bit too beaky and screechy. They stare at you, too.

file said...

no mimi thank You, really like it

notice the time of my last post, we are 6 hours ahead of that and reading your verse was like putting my head in a bucket of fresh North seawater

a curt and salty mimi, lovely

echo Z; more please

ps/btw; we're (slowly) off to the land of the midnight sun (and iredescent skies) and it's pricking my imagination already, tho I hope it's not as sleepless as you describe

Anonymous said...

File: Zeph has another one from me for The Shipping Forecast. She is waiting on yours before posting them together.
Ironically after writing about the gulls, I managed to sleep through them today!

Anonymous said...

My heart aches, again
My eyes hurt, again.

No-one told me this would happen
Again.

You grow old
You wear your trousers rolled

It should not hurt

You don’t eat a peach
On the beach

You eat raspberries
In the car

You laugh
When others cry

It should be fun
It should be fine

It’s not
It hurts

DoctorShoot said...

Mimi mimi
love them both, thank you.

you are swooping in and out of the gulls you hate and love, and resisting being caught and stuffed and handed on as a trophy...
like brave Nina

"NINA: ....they
call this place Bohemia and are afraid I shall become an actress.
But this lake attracts me as it does the gulls. My heart is full
of you...." Chekov's Sea Gull

There is a certain fascinating haunting exciting edge to your personna Mimi and it always hovers by the fireside in the afternoon light of my imagination...

Anonymous said...

Ah... Sweet and sad, Mimi. But not all that old, surely?

Anonymous said...

Doc - thank you for those words. I am touched and flattered to find that words I write can evoke emotion in others.

DoctorShoot said...

Mimi
Robert Greaves, interviewed in his precious leek garden, said that "the taste is much sweeter closer to the heart", and your words, cutting so close, are proof

and Virginia:
"Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends."

and we are here for you...
and anyhow,
raspberries in the car still sounds pretty good...

many rivers to cross...
Doc

Anonymous said...

Doc: you have to cross the Findhorn to find the sweetest raspberries to eat in the car or on the beach. I have been made joyful by your words. This space that La Belle Zepherine has given us, is to be wondered at. La Madame de Salon has poems to spare for all of us. It's a wonder that we are dancing tonight.

file said...

yep, I'll sit in your Morgan with a punnet of raspberries too mimis, we'll share our tales of the black isles, I'll bring the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack

file said...

and together we'll all pick the seeds out of our teeth...

DoctorShoot said...

sounds too well balanced... if I'm not wrong

so perhaps I might come along
if three in a morgan isn't too off song
and like unto a gooseberry's aphroditic dipthong
record the poetic badinage and other goings on...

file said...

what a line!

doc you're immense but I'm sure there's space enough

Anonymous said...

Doc, file,

I can see through your little scheme, you know. You want to eat all the raspberries and enjoy Mimi's company without me. Sorry, I'm coming too. I don't know what a Morgan is but I hope it's got a sun roof.

file said...

being a pataphysical Morgan it would be somehow incomplete without m.offsid

http://forum.avtoindex.com/foto/data/media/150/plus8_1.jpg

file said...

by the way, mimi, can you see how I'm taking good care of Snowy?

if m.offsid wants to cook him he'll have to row quickly to catch him first

if he waits till we get to the Isle Noir he'll have to beware he doesn't get cooked himself

Anonymous said...

I really don't understand what you mean by "Snowey". If you're talking about Tintin's dog, his name was Milou.

file said...

he was a dog of many names

in Thai 'milou' means 'dunno' or 'sais pas'

Anonymous said...

So sweet you all want to ride in the car and eat the raspberries with me. We do have the best fruit here, we just don't export. Small environment, and now as the Tornadoes blast by my window, I seek peace with your good selves in the Salon.

DoctorShoot said...

tornados here too mimi (gales anyway)
and gulls against the window...
whack whack...
tournedos a la gull anyone?..

Anonymous said...

Tornadoes, mechanical or weather. We have them all. I rescued a gull today. He/she will no doubt come back to haunt me.

DoctorShoot said...

mimi
well done
rescue of the bird...

hope you get it back on the wing before offie tables the carribbean recipie...

every life you save becomes another one you have lived...

DoctorShoot said...

...and your poem is hauntingly beautiful and tightly delivered as befits a painting from the soul

Anonymous said...

I have a long history of tragically failed animal rescue. Mrs Offside's influence again, I'm afraid.

In Ireland, we once rescued a baby bat that had fallen from the, er, nest, or whatever it is they sleep in. Took it home and built a house for it out of a plastic box and a flower pot. We named her Simone. She could hang all right. Tried everything we had in the kitchen, and she seemed to settle on bananas and strawberry jam. She died after a couple of days.

Next, it was a baby bird. A finch of some description, no doubt. I found it on the road, probably after an encounter with a windshield. We kept it in the bedrooom overnight and he flew onto the bed in the morning. Mrs Offside sent me out in the garden to dig for worms. I found myself in the kitchen at six in the morning, knifing some poor worm into manageable chunks and seriously wondering where my life was heading. The thing died in Mrs Offside's hand. She was inconsolable.

Then, there was the young rabbit we rescued from the jaws of the neighbour's dog. Its eyes were stuck fast by some sticky substance and it kept bumping into the furniture. We cleaned them with some kind of solvant. Can't remember what it was, but it was quite strong. Young rabbit was stoned for a couple of hours. Then, he came out of it but was still bumping into the furniture. We locked him up in the garden shed for the evening with a blanket, some salad and something to read. It was dead when we came back from the pub.

Next time, I think I'll just walk on by. Unless Mrs Offside is with me, of course.

DoctorShoot said...

Offie I am outraged
that you made me laugh out loud, over some poor suffering creature...
blown off course and down the spout..

I hope the reading material was not accidentally say on the reverse side of the coursing reviews...
or perhaps whilst you were callously downing guiness at the hounds and hare tavern, some rabbit rights organiser slipped into the shed and placed a corpse where the escapee had been just to trick you...

Zephirine said...

Sounds like the bunny was pretty sick before even the dog got it, Offy, though no doubt you finished it off - was Stephen King really the right choice for a young rabbit?

Until recently I had a cat that never quite understood about hunting - she would catch things, bring them carefully indoors and then let them go unharmed. Possibly she planned to keep them as pets, or maybe she thought I actually enjoyed spending hours pursuing and repatriating mice and birds. Once when I took one of her blackbirds out to the garden to let it go, I was mobbed by every blackbird in the neighbourhood, swooping unnervingly over my head and shrieking at me in a Hitchcockian manner. It's not often you see a grown woman standing in a garden indignantly shouting "It wasn't me that caught him!" to a bunch of songbirds...

DoctorShoot said...

Zeph
S'cool for cats:

http://www.abc.net.au/landline/stories/s431384.htm

Zephirine said...

Alas, Doc, too late to train that particular cat who has gone to the great sofa in the sky. In my experience, cats can't be trained to do what we want, but they can train us all right. Though their methods can be rough, think of our poor friend Andrewm..

DoctorShoot said...

Andrewm
another poor victim of animal experiments...
perhaps the cats are challenging douglas adams mice for supremacy...

andrewm liked my illurian nymphs piece so the cats must have done their work...