Saturday, March 24, 2012

Faith Manages [FGC #7]

a brand new feeder
a new notebook, opened up
  I have to believe
bird by bird and word by word
these vacancies won't remain

This week's Form and Genre Challenge was a doozy: writing a Japanese Tanka poem. Japanese poetry has such a powerful aesthetic; I cannot think of it without thinking of nature, of drifting cherry blossoms and the strum of a koto. It's weirdly intimidating, even to a sonneteer like myself (read my sonnets, though, and you'll see how dainty they aren't). It haunted me all week, this challenge. But then I got a new bird feeder for my birthday, put it together, hung it up, filled it with seed, and this came to me while I watched, seemingly in vain, for the birds to start visiting it.

Funny enough, just this evening as I was leaving for work after scribbling down some lines I wanted to use, a purple finch and another, less easily identifiable finch, showed up and started pigging out, wolfing it down, and other animal metaphors for eating!

4 comments:

  1. I love the imagery! And what a wonderful backstory!

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  2. I love the line, "bird by bird and word by word." Nature always finds a way, and the birds have found a way to your feeder!

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  3. This totally worked for me! I love the idea of comparing these two seemingly unrelated items (a bird feeder and a notebook) and bringing them together for the one salient point they truly have in common: they are waiting to be filled!

    "bird by bird and word by word" was masterful line!

    Barbara @ de rebus
    www(dot)derebus(dot)net

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  4. I like the way you compare the notebook and the feeder opening up new horizons.

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