Each year with peace the mother geese
Find those penthouse nests after the snows
They see platforms for ospreys:
prime waterfront real estate. For a time,
they settle themselves, get comfortable,
squat home with mirth; they are there first.
But.
Each year in May there comes a day
when these geese have lost their lease.
Ospreys come back. I’ve never seen an attack
and yet one day raptor eyes appraise the skies,
and forsooth! There’s no longer a single penthouse dwelling goose!
poem-ornithological optimism April 8, 2025
poem-blast from the past April 7, 2025
Once again
you come by dream
to spend some time with me.
This visit you brought your wife
and gave me wildly inappropriate gifts
that I accepted graciously,
thankful her choices were not mine.
And yet my heart
still stirred at your smile.
How strange, though parted by
time, miles, and reality,
in youthful memory, you still
do this to me.
poem- a spring day April 3, 2025
At the neighbour’s, there are twenty-one robins
purposefully flittering and twittering.
Above, the sky is baby blue;
little cloud puffs waft across, like running tykes,
(hear their giggles?)
On trees, green buds peek from each branch.
Breathe in these beginnings.
I believe, this peaceful day
is what hope looks like.
poem-winter dusk January 10, 2024
Snowplough scraping as it passes
Candles flickering in evening dim
Snowflakes falling outside our windows
A perfect evening to stay in.
poem- impatiently February 28, 2020
If I refuse to wear my boots,
choose a light jacket instead of that coat,
keep my feet on gravel, ignore snow piles,
can I force winter to go?
Beguile spring with my wiles?
poem- today October 13, 2016
This is my only today
One opportunity to be
One chance to choose my way
One day to seize opportunities
This is my only today
.
This path is not the only way
I may choose other vistas to see
I may have new speeches to say
I may see what’s ugly beautifully
That path is not the only way.
poem-breeze July 1, 2016
Leaves wave
from tree tops
Some exhuberant,
amazed to greet the sky,
some, more lazily,
wave with sighs
poem-choosing March 31, 2016
Will I choose you?
Or you?
Or will I choose at all?
Am I ready for this work
of nurturing potential?
My world is wound tightly
with possibility,
fighting emotionality with
rationality.
poem-three March 8, 2016
twelve
one
two
three
o’clock.
This hotel room is absent of you,
No lovers’ talk,
just me,
myself,
and seven o’clock is coming far
too soon.
Shawn L. Bird 