Friday, June 17, 2011

Poetry Friday: Oven Bird



I'm working on a project for a museum in Tennessee, writing some information panels for them. This cute little ovenbird is in the tree exhibit. He gets his name from the shape of his nest, which looks like a dutch oven. His call is increasingly loud bursts of "teacher-TEAcher-TEACHER." So for Poetry Friday, my contribution is a Robert Frost poem about this little guy.

Photo by Bill Hilton Jr. from  Hilton Pond Center 

The Oven Bird
Robert Frost

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

More poetry Friday at Check it Out.







4 comments:

  1. Hey, I've got Robert Frost on my mind today, too!

    Thanks for the message you sent to my live journal. I replied to the email contact on your blog, so hope you get that!

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  2. ...love "a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird" - Thanks for sharing! The museum writing project sounds fun.
    www.robynhoodblack.com

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  3. Sounds like a lovely project. Isn't it great that someone has written a poem about almost everything you can think of? Makes me want to find a subject that no one has written about and write about it, just to make sure everything is covered.

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  4. Thanks for stopping, Jeannine. I loved your pics of the Frost house.

    I'm just starting on the museum project, Robyn, but already loving the species details I'm learning.

    Tabatha, I have to say I really was surprised when I found the Oven Bird poem. I'd never even heard of an oven bird. I'm sure there are some other topics out there you could dive into!

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