“Don’t believe the chaffinch,” my mother told me,
hands slack in linen tangles.
“They know so little of our world,
so little of your world,
so little of any world men tread.
Imagine always looking up,
or always looking down,
never along stranger scopes.
Can you imagine a world without level understanding,
without eye-to-eye,
without seeing as another person does?
As another person can?
How can the chaffinch think?
They have no lessons, no masters, no books!
Their nature divides them from us,
but we divine their nature,
we divine our own!
And might we mistake in our proclaims
and could a chaffinch be other,
other than what we divine if there were books?”
Written for The Daily Prompt – Surreal
Beautifully written poetry with a beautiful sentiment.
I was once watching my bird table when this happened…
the crazy Chaffinch
with all the sky to choose from ~
flew at the window
I’ve had that happen, scared the living daylights out of me.
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Brilliant poem! Now crows in a murder on the other hand…quite a different story…
Indeed it is, much more sinister. Thanks for the comment.
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I really really like this. I love how you use an animal as seemingly simple as a bird to highlight our attempts as humans to interpret things we can’t know. At least that’s how I read your poem. Anyway, it’s really a great piece of writing!
Thank you, this is the exact sort of feedback that I wanted to receive about this poem.
It’s nice to see how closely your interpretation ran to my own intentions in writing this.
First of all, I want to thank you for the visit to my site. Then come here to return it and find this wonderfully woven tale about human behavior as seen from a bird’s eye view. Thought you might be interested in a recent post I did, a bit of mythos concerning hawks and other things,
http://soulsmusic.wordpress.com/2014/02/21/love-loves-difficult-things/
Thanks again and I really like your poem,
Elizabeth
http://soulsmusic.wordpress.com
Thank you for the comment and I’ll make sure to stop by and check out your post.
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I adore this. That is all I can think to say. 🙂
Thank you very much, that’s really lovely to hear.