words from the woodland – bird song
I have a lot of projects underway, mostly on the ‘administrative’ side of writing. I have been ordering and revising a manuscript of poems on abandoned aspects of our landscape ( see https://nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/first-and-last-and-in-between/ ). Now, I have reached the point where I really need to set the manuscript aside so I can approach it with a fresh eye in a couple of weeks. So I will use the days between to order another manuscript of poems about sounds from the woodland. The poems mostly use animal and bird sounds and songs as metaphors for human communication.
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Some of these poems have been around a while, packaged in another form. In the last weeks, I have been thinking about the bird song metaphor and now I am ready to consider the poems in relation to one-another. Perhaps I am responding to the Black-capped Chickadees, chattering in the Tamarack. Or the Hairy Woodpecker who comes every few days to beat his head against our telephone pole. Perhaps I am thinking more than usual about human communication (having just learned to ‘Twitter’).
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January 8, 2012 ‘two Mourning Doves’ Jane Tims
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drawing doves
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‘… cease to mourn …’
Virgil, Eclogue I
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grey sighs beneath graphite
or where eraser softens
troubled feathers
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doves lament, disturb
fine detail, mourn
the fingers’ tremble
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pencil strokes beak
and fingernails, kernels
of corn, husks of sunflower
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Copyright 2015 Jane Tims
nichepoetryandprose 
Beautiful, Jane. I’ve been pondering bird-speak, too, although I don’t have the poetic talent to describe it. Their communication sounds like a language to me.
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Robin
January 30, 2015 at 1:56 pm
Hi Robin. I wish I knew more about bird song. I have a friend who can recognise any bird by its call. Jane
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jane tims
January 30, 2015 at 3:33 pm