| I found this poem some years ago surfing the net and looking for something unusual. It turned out to be unusual. Actually, after reading these 18 lines (which contain a sort of strange hidden rhyme and rhythm) I was both perplexed and fascinated. This poem gave me a sense that there is something more under the labyrinthine strings of words. When I was small a bird
flew into my eye.
At first, wings battered,
heart beating the sound
a handful of pebbles
dropped from a bridge into water.
I covered my face, looked away
from others.
They were confused by fluttering
behind my eyes, scratching sounds.
When I cried pinfeathers smothered the sun. Lately I’ve learned to see through wings.
My eyes become golden, my fingers
turned talon. I seek high places.
One day I’ll climb higher than you
can imagine. I’ve told no one my plan.
Only the corner of my eye can give me away.
A small fluttering thing tries to get out. Mrs. Calder’s vocation is teaching Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba. In review to A. Calder Wolf Tree (Bird belongs to this very collection of poems) Joanna M. Weston provides a straightforward remark on the author’s works: “Calder brings together the human and natural world with ease. There is an almost seamless integration, a blurring of lines between the environment and humanity: each affects the other in some way; each inhabits the other”. But how do you understand the poem? What is its message? Does it have personal appeal to you?
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