Ryan wrote this as a school assignment back in sixth grade. His teacher was taken with the imagery, submitted it to Creative Kids magazine, and he became a published author. I remember reading this for the first time and shedding some tears myself, thankful for being able to see things through his eyes, and that he could describe a perfectly average scene from his window so beautifully. I'm not impartial in any way, but I do love this poem. In honor of National Poetry Month, my oldest poet son who still has a way with words, the fact that the gutter is no longer filled with white flakes, and that I actually did some spring cleaning (but his window is still speckled with smudges of dirt), I'm sharing:
Gutter Filled With White Flakes
Gutter
filled with white flakes as they billowed out-
ward, roof dappled with
melting snow. I sat watching
birds. By chance, I saw them, flooding by
like water in
the rapids, rippling, fluttering about madly as
dragon-
flies. Small, dark, brown birds with tan flecks all down
their
bodies ending in bristled curls on their tails. One
halted its skyward
ascent to sit on the edge of the
snow-filled gutter. A twig snapped
above the bird's
head and plummeted. The bird, startled, slapped its
wings and gracefully soared away from its certain peril.
One bird gone,
yet another replaced it almost immedi-
ately, squatting down, making
itself look ever more
pudgy, so pudgy in fact, that I almost had to
laugh.
That bird's visit, too, was cut short. A heavy truck rum-
bled down
the road startling the bird, it drove onward
in its trek to an unknown
destination. A cardinal sits
on a tree branch, tree's trunk striped with
ribbons of
rolling droplets as if in tears, weeping with sorrow
at the
cardinal's departure. As the smudges of dirt with
which my window is
speckled begin to cloud my view,
I begin to slip into the world of
knowingness. I turn
away, in tears, vowing to look back on this day and
behold again all the glory and peace it brought.
Wow. What a keepsake for you and what a wonderful gift he has!
ReplyDeleteThat's wonderful.
ReplyDeletewhat a gift...in so many ways! thank you for sharing it with us today!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful and it tells to story so well, as it paints a peaceful picture of a winter scene.
ReplyDeleteThat's beautiful, Bonny! Thanks so much for sharing. (And what a perfect way to celebrate National Poetry Month.)
ReplyDelete