Happy National Poetry Day (if you're a Brit)

In honour of National Poetry Day in Britain, I've dredged up and am posting a poem I wrote a few years back. Go ahead, read some poetry today. You might be surprised at how pleasant you find it.

I Stop and Listen to a Winter Wren

Perhaps jealous of the sound—a rivulet trickling

down to wash stones and fallen branches—

the winter wren sings its spring digs,

a tangled rising-and-falling in the brush.

Surely the trill must soon cease its winding

progress through the trees—surely this small

brown creature cannot go on so,

drowning out the stream? It must be all lungs.

It does end, of course, and the unconscious

duet of water and earth emerges in the ensuing

quiet, seeming to pick up where the bird trails off,

dipping up and down over moss and twig.

The wren again inhales damp May air;

it cannot sing forever, though it will die trying.