Here is the 14th poem in my collection of twenty children’s poems about birds that I began over ten years ago, “Pearl’s Own Book of Birds”. The first poem in the collection was published in Compendium: The Kitchen Sink January 29, 2023 and can be found in the archives by going directly to my substack site. I have published poems from the collection every month since then.
Legend of the Great Blue Heron There are stories of the mighty Great Blue, visions from over the islands of sleep made of tissue and mirrors, jade trees and emerald moss. Those herons are the rescuers of brave girls who have come into their dreams unaware of the danger in the haloes of mist that curl around mountains marked by orange palms and sleeping beasts steered through the cosmos by these winged things, a hope for kingdoms of wild clear flights where sweetcake and goldenfish are just right to strengthen bold girls who want a perfect house and a hero’s dreams but are surprised by loathsome gnomes hidden inside the fog and dense fens of endless reeds. Wandering through that dream in the profound cloak of amethysts and silk these girls are spun round and round by the sound of music from these misshapen men who steal from the poor and give to the rich and don’t know how to care. The herons fly in then, arrive in a flurry of blue with saber beaks to take those girls away. They do not speak beyond the crackle of their initial descent; their eyes are blank. They rise like kites and the dreamt world wakes. The silver waters and tissue clouds fall away. The herons aim for the blonde moon parachute those daring girls back beneath their safe duvets in their own quiet rooms, and then like dreams those herons float away.
The inspiration for this collection came from time I spent birdwatching with my grandchild Pearl. During our visits we often took Pearl to the beach or other natural areas in Florida to look for and observe birds. For a young person who, when we started these outings, was just learning to talk, Pearl showed unusual interest and acumen in spotting and watching birds and liked looking at my bird identification handbooks, especially on outings to the national seashore. I think the picture below illustrates this quite well. Each poem features a different bird. I’ll send them out one at a time interspersed with my other writing via Compendium: The Kitchen Sink. The majority of the photographs that accompany the poems are mine, but a few have been borrowed from free internet files and are not my own. Reminder: poetry from Compendium: The Kitchen Sink is best read directly from my substack site using a laptop or desktop. Iphones distort line ending and stanza integrity.