Showing posts with label West Wind #7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Wind #7. Show all posts

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Mockingbird and the Cherry Tree




Found bit, from Mary Oliver's prose poem, West Wind #7 from her book West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems. This is the second verse:


---Today Bill tells us - for a mockingbird has begun to sing -
---how a friend came during the summer and filled a bowl with
---fruit from the cherry tree. Then, leaving the bowl on the
---stoop, he went inside to sit with Bill at the kitchen table. To-
---gether Bill and his friend watched the mockingbird come to
---the bowl, take the cherries one by one, fly back across the yard
---and drop them under the branches of the tree. When the
---bowl was empty the bird settled again in the leaves and began
---to sing vigorously.

---Mary Oliver




And darling Issa:

gate's cherry tree
all this flit-flit flitting
is work!
Issa translated by David Lanoue




best,
Don