Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Goldfinch

(Inspired by Wallace Stevens's poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird', which is one of my favorites.)

Among the deathly pale hills

suffocating in their blanket of snow,

the only thing moving was the wing of the goldfinch.

 

My mind was always pulling,

tearing itself apart to ride down three different roads,

and on each path was a goldfinch.

 

The goldfinch soared in the autumn sky,

the winds no match for its clever eye.

 

Humankind and nature
are one.

Humankind and nature and the goldfinch
are one.

 

The view from the top of the mountain

wowed me, and widened my eyes.

The goldfinch’s whistle

stole my breath away.

 

The trees are naked now,

trying to hide their unfashionably empty branches,

gray against the blindingly white snow.

One has no need.

It is the tree where the goldfinch rests.

 

Oh, great rabbis and scholars
of the villages and temples of old,

why do you speak of jeweled birds?

You have no need for ruby-adorned mechanical things,

for the goldfinch walks at your feet.

 

I know of stories, of songs,

of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings.

Yet I know, too,

that the goldfinch is involved in what I know.

 

When the goldfinch

Flies out of sight

I am compelled by a sudden urge

To follow its golden wings to the ends of the earth.

 

When in sight

Of goldfinches flying in the evening light,

Even the heartless, the unfeeling

Would cry out in awe.

 

He rode around Vermont

On a chestnut horse, with unsightly yellow reins.

Suddenly, a fear overtook him:

He mistook the limp little reins

For a goldfinch.

 

The earth is turning,

and the river is moving.

The goldfinch will be flying.

 

ⅫⅠ

It was winter, again.

It had been snowing;

It was going to snow, again.

The goldfinch sat

In the cedar limbs. 

OverTheRainbow

VT

11 years old

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