June 2, 2012

A summer morning, blue skies, sunny, hot, humid . . . probably not a break in the heat until October <chuckle>.  Every bird is out this morning looking for breakfast, blue jays, cardinals, a brown thrasher, mourning doves, and a bunch of the tiny ones that I can't tell one from the other.  A lot of them are singing, especially the mockingbirds.  I actually tried to find out which bird has the "cheater, cheater, cheater" call and discovered it may be more than one bird.  Some experts say a cardinal, some a robin, some a Carolina wren.  I have heard a lot of cardinals and to me they mostly sound like a rusty door, and I am not sure we still have robins here this time of year.  I tried to find out but the bird sites are confusing. From my own observation, we get them for awhile in the early early spring but usually by this time they seem to go some place cooler.  So until I see one singing the same time I hear that funny call, I guess I won't know for sure., and my luck will be when I finally see some bird making that call, it will be a mockingbird mimicking some other bird <chuckle>.  The sun has moved around so that this time of morning the crepe myrtle is painted all gold and there is sun lighting up the green flames of the cane, their long thin leaves moving with a little breeze.

 In poetry, forms often sound too forced for me, often seem like something constrained beyond bearing within the walls of the form.  A villanelle is a very structured form, full of repetition, not just the repetition of sound but of whole lines.  So what amazed me about this poem is that until the last stanza, I did not realize the form.  I started reading it because of the title and when I was done read it over again to see how the poet had folded the whole poem together, just like the paper birds . . .

Paper Birds
       
Moths must tire of sleeping near the ceiling.
All that waiting for their wings to match
color that changes where wall folds to eave.

This afternoon I found her at the table, asleep
amongst paper, delicate as dreams, elaborate
birds made of folding, made for our ceiling.

I try unfolding one, tail and beak of pleats,
green and yellow flowers on a patch
of wing. No cuts or glue to hold to evening,

to have them flying from fishing line. Geese,
swans, a hummingbird. Window unlatched,
and wind wakes their sleeping from the ceiling.

Song of paper rustling; song of crease
and bend; song of watching
color that changes where wall folds to eave.

We fall asleep like this, a counting sheep,
a listening for paper birds, a grasping
for sounds that sleep near the ceiling,
in colors that change where wall folds to eave.

Julia Koets

I admire anyone one who can take a difficult task and through hard work and endless repetition make it look . . . simple.  Michael over the years made lots of origami birds, and dozens of other things.  He used to fold up dollars for tips into frogs and stars and cranes.  I have one of his cranes still sitting among the bottles on my desk, a blue one with white chrysanthemums on its wings.  Reading through this poem again, I see how she did it, I can see the ghost of the form, but what intrigues me over and over is how the folding paper becomes, at least for me, a kind of folding of the words, the pleats and mountain folds of her words every bit as structured as the origami birds, and every bit as free, as graceful, as surprising.  They float to the ceiling and leave behind a kind of deep tranquility that blesses the day.