The next doodle shows some birds in a cage. Now I've been on holiday with birdwatchers and I can tell you to me it isn't a lot of fun. They'll point to some tree about a mile away, claim to be able to see a bird in the top of it, raise binoculars to their eyes and yell out gleefully, "It's the greater-crested, yellow heron." or some such nonsense. I'm still trying to locate the tree.
I can't tell one bird from another. Hence this poem.
Bird Blind
I can't tell a wren from an emu.
I can't tell a finch from a quail.
Ask me to point out a penguin.
There's a pretty good chance that I'll fail.
I think what we have is a budgie,
'Cause a turkey won't fit in a cage,
But hoopoe and heron and hornbill
Are pictures and words on a page.
At Christmas I recognize robins,
On a card with some holly and snow,
But outside on a branch or in flight
Could be vultures for all that I know.
If you point at the sky, my eyes follow
And I look at the circling dot,
But is it a swift or a swallow?
Or a Dodo? (Well probably not.)
A condor, a jackdaw, a lapwing,
A pelican, puffin or kite,
A woodpecker, ptarmigan, eagle
Are all just the same in my sight.
Believe it or not, I am bird blind.
I'm not ornithologically graced,
But it's not all bad news, I can tell
A duck from a chicken... by taste.
3 comments:
Like this one quite a lot - I can see it as one of those approachable verses they would slip into poetry anthologies at school.
Just a thought though. I had to read the last two lines a few times over to get them to scan in my head. How about replacing "...can tell a..." with "...distinguish..."
Hmm. Seems OK as it is to me.
Six of one half a dozen of the other,
I'll think about it though.
Actually, on reflection, it probably is OK. I think you just need to move the indefinite article to the end of the pennultimate line and thus keep an unstressed syllable at the end.
Now I will go and find a bit of life.
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