The Blackbird is a Little Late

I have been rather dubious about this poem, so it has been sitting on my laptop for over a week. In fact, I had forgotten about it altogether until I ran across it today.

I’ve decided to go ahead and post it with some further alterations (it has had many already). Perhaps, despite my misgivings over the flow of the lines, you will be able to see with me the dark bird silhouetted against the sky for a few moment’s bliss of breeze and motion.

The bird I am describing is the red-winged blackbird of Midwestern fields: glossy black with a brilliant red spot on each wing.

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The Blackbird

Buoyed by the breeze you pause
One moment in the endless blue
(Where only one small cloud or two
Lie lightly as a shred of gauze).
The wind arcs up beneath your wings
Which curve and dance within its clasp;
A moment’s monarch in its grasp,
You see the hill below you swing;
You hover while the lissome breeze
That lifts your sable feathers there
Still bids you balance on the air;
You linger near the shadowed trees
That whisper promised welcome; green
They beckon to your watching eye;
The breeze flits elsewhere, and you fly
Within their shadows, dark, unseen.