I feel like that bedraggled, aging thrush of Hardy’s poem, who believes in hope in a world that is a rather dark place, then and now. Or who simply does what nature requires, doing what’s needed for survival, equipped for that with instincts that aim at continuity and consequently inspiring hope.

Hope it shall be, then, during a celebration of same that is called Christmas.

The Darkling Thrush

BY THOMAS HARDY

I leant upon a coppice gate
      When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
      The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
      Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
      Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
      The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
      The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
      Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
      The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
      Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
      In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
      Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
      Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
      His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
      And I was unaware.

Photographs of owls, sparrow and finches.

Now where do I find my blast-beruffled plume?

I know why the caged bird sings….I first “heard” these words in a piece of music – Buckshot Lefonque’s version to be precise.

Only later did I realize it was an actual poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, published in 1899; the phrase I cited above might be familiar to some as the title of Maya Angelou’s autobiography.

Here is the whole poem:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46459/sympathy-56d22658afbc0

And here is an excerpt:

Dunbar died at age 33 in 1906. He was gifted, achieved recognition during his life time, but also troubled, in ill health and caught in a political trap. The public wanted his humorous, sometimes sentimental accounts of Black life during and after slavery written in dialect, and showed disdain for his descriptions of violence and injustice. To sell his works and make it as a writer, critics claim he resorted to caricaturing his own race, portraying black slaves as faithful and obedient, slow-witted but good-natured workers appreciative of their benevolent white owners. Dunbar drew the ire of many critics for his stereotyped characters, and some of his detractors even alleged that he contributed to racist concepts while simultaneously disdaining such thinking. (See link below)

Many current scholars draw a more complex picture, pointing to his many ways of describing and attacking racism, more so in his poetry than his novels and story collections.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/paul-laurence-dunbar

The poem I chose is a lament, a painfully sad expression of all that is denied to the being deprived of its freedom.

Dunbar’s parents were slaves. The majority of their descendants live in different kinds of cages – being deprived of the rights to walk without fear, to chose where to live and be treated as equals. On the 50th anniversary of MLK’s assassination today I fear he is rolling in his grave.

The goldfinch it shall be…..captured year-round in places near Portland.

At Least 47 Shades

The goldfinch in its full spring molt.
The bee pollen of sticky and thick.
The quince to perfume a new bride’s kiss.
The ocher yellow in Vermeer’s pearl-necklaced woman.
The opal cream floral on a kimonoed sleeve.
The zest yellow of a Nike Quickstrike in limited numbers.
The imperial yellow embroided robes.
The Aztec gold send by Cortés to Spain.
The Zinnia gold favored by butterflies.
The iguana who keeps watch on Mayan ruins.
The straw hat a cone woven with young bamboo.
The rising sun of Japan’s Amaterasu leaving her cave.
The sand dune that swallows the film’s lovers but keeps them alive.
The coastlight of sun lost in fog.
The chilled lemonade from the fruit of bitterness.
The Manila tint to sunny the laundry room.
The blond and boring heartthrob.
The yellow flash before the grin gets too tight.
The lemon tart with a mouth to match.
The star fruit which can mean two-faced in Tagalog.
The fool’s gold of sojourners and farmers.
The golden promise that still lures us here.
The sunshower which turns my tawny skin brown.
The banana split of Asian outside white underneath.
The Chinese mustard stirred with a dribble of soy sauce.
The yellowtail tuna father cleaned and sliced thin.
The yolk we ate raw with sukiyaki and rice.
The pear ice cream we licked that Tohoku summer.
The moonscape suffusing a rice paper screen.
The theater lights which make the audience vanish.
The electric yellow called Lake Malawi’s yellow prince.
The daffodil that doesn’t match these mean streets.
The marigold for night sweats and contusions.
The summer haze which splits open the sky.
The slicker yellow bands on those 9/11 jackets.
The dandelion that bursts through sidewalks.
The blazing star we still can’t see rushing toward us.
The yellow rose legend of a Texas slave woman.
The atomic tangerine of Los Alamos, New Mexico.
The Jasper yellow of gemstone and James Byrd.
The flame yellow as bone turns to ash.
The wick moving in time with my measured breath.
The first light an eye latches on to.
The whisper yellow as a pale strand of moon.
The yellow lotus that’s nourished by mud.
The poppy spring returns to the Antelope Valley.
The wonderstruck even in those old eyes.
The Chinese lantern riding a night sky.
The sparkler a child waves in the dark.

by Amy Uyematsu
from The Yellow Door
Red Hen Press, 2015

.

I did it – 3 full minutes without thinking of that dismal orange hue…