Bird PoemsOn the Forest Floor

By: James V. Harker, Jr.Beneath some fallen leaves;

On the forest floor, Lies a bird; silent.

Chirping no more... The once esteemed beauty

Of his golden feathers, Are now washed away,

By the rain and awful weather, His wings are bent and broken;

He can barely fly, The eagle-like heart he once had,

Is now beginning to die. No one looks up to this bird anymore.

He is just another fallen object, Lying on the forest floor... The little bird, as he dies,

Looks up at the blue skies, And no one even stops to cry, Or to feel any emotions inside, As his heart beats its last song,

No one wonders if they have done wrong. As it was, the bird just needed love;

Love, all along. But there was no one there, To mend his broken wings,

There was no one there, To listen to the song he would sing.

The people were too busy, And too controlled by wealth,

To care at all about nursing a bird, Back to proper health.

They could not look down, To the broken, sad, and poor;

And spot a little bird, Lying there,

On the forest floor, They could not bend down, And cup him in their palm. They could not sooth him,

And make his beating heart calm. But there was Someone,

Up in the sky, He watched sadly,

As the little bird slowly died, His hand reached down,

From the place in the sky, It carried the bird up, up,

Way up high. Now the bird is free,

Free again. Free to chirp, free to sing,

A song of no end, But, down here,

Where the bird once lay; On the forest floor, Things get harder;

Worse than they were before, More things die,

And drop to the ground. Things vanish away,

Without making a sound, And while they are now happy,

We can not ignore, The bird we left there to die,

On the forest floor.The Humming Bird

By: Brandon S. HesseThe rain has stopped,And daylight delays.

The night is calm;And anticipates its rays.

As morning breaks through,Like a deer thru the hedge;

She is already foundAt a rose petal's edge.

Such a simple life,Portrayed in such hurry.

Though its all in a day's work;There is no time for her to worry.

Gathering nectar for food,Her song she plays loud.

Though merely a result of her flight,Her song she plays proud!

So the next time you see her,Don't say a single word.

For you will have just missedThe song of the Humming Bird!

Birds of SunfallBy: Dinesh

Birds of sunfall passing in my eyes Far off in the patterns of storm clouds,

How I wish to freeze you in my thoughts And paint my poem on skies of yours.

Birds of sunfall singing your song Pouring o'er hues at the trees of fall,

How I wish to flutter with you beside And douse my wings at silent shores.

Birds of sunfall, of poets' surmise Gliding towards where you belong How I wish to predict your paths

And come to where completeness moors.

Birds of sunfall, this evening dies, Come to my windows and prove me wrong.

Swallow EyesBy: Marcia J. Zeller

As a swallow sits in an old rotting tree, Lovely and sad as a swallow should be,

The sun's all shining as he's basking. All the long I'm there asking,

What is it that you see? His wings not bent, but stretched to the extent;

With the wink of an eye, swallow, dear swallow begins to fly. Over the moon and across the sky,

Up to where the angles sing their sweet lullaby. Take my word for it, he whispered gaily,

I see God's magic daily. There's an obscene amount of green,

So many colors to be seen, You see,

But I alone just wallow, As a swallow in this old rotting tree.

Cardinal in the SnowBy: Grace

A white blanket covers the yard. Snowflakes fly swiftly threw the air.

There sits a Cardinal on the frozen bush. Feathers puffed and bold.

Singing a winter tune. the wet snowflakes melt on his head.

Hearing the creak of a gate, and with one swift movement he lifts into a gentle soar. Off he goes into the white sky.

To Be a BirdBy: Tim Graham

The Eagle soars, then comes to rest, atop an impossible tower.

The Eagle soars from the seat of Power.

The Owl watches, patiently perched, atop a moonlit roof.

The Owl watches from the seat of Truth.

The Lark sings, a melody made, atop the clouds above.

The Lark sings from the seat of Love.

To be a bird! To be all three!!!

With enough Love, to find the Truth and Power in me.

SparrowsBy: Sally Plumb

Sparrows

Birds in a bare bush

beneath quiet noonday beams,

tail flicking, preening,

dreaming Spring dreams.

There, on the high branch

backs to the sun - sparrows -

steeped warm.

A calm March has begun.

Bird MusicBy: Rose Terry Cooke

Singer of priceless melody,Underguerdoned chorister of air,Who from the lithe top of the tree

Pourest at will thy music rare,As if a sudden brook laughed down the hill-side there.

 The purple-blossomed fields of grass,

Waved sea-like to the idle wind,Thick daisies that the stars surpass,Being as fair and far more kind;--

All sweet uncultured things thy wild notes bring to mind. 

When that enraptured overflowOf singing into silence dies,

Thy rapid fleeting pinions showWhere all thy spell of sweetness lies

Gathered in one small nest from the wide earth and skies. 

Unconscious of thine audience,Careless of praises as of blame,In simpleness and innocence,

Thy gentle life pursues its aim,So tender and serene, that we might blush for shame.

 The patience of thy brooding wingsThat droop in silence day by day,The little crowd of callow thingsThat joy for weariness repay,--

These are the living spring, thy song the fountain's spray.Birds

By: Sarah Josepha HaleIf ever I see,

On bush or tree,Young birds in a pretty nest,

I must not, in my play,Steal the birds away,

To grieve their mother's breast. 

My mother I know,Would sorrow so,

Should I be stolen away--So I'll speak to the birds,

In my softest words,Nor hurt them in my play.

Birds of SpringBy: Watie W. Swanzy

Trooping o'er the meadows,Chatter, chatter, chatter!Greeting pussy willows,Twitter, twitter, twitter!

Pluming each light wing,Sipping at the spring,

Flitting here and there,Sweet birds everywhere!

 First awake at morning,

Chirping, chirping, chirping!First to greet the day-king,Trilling, trilling, trilling!

Then a happy flyFar up in the sky,

Coming back to restAnd to take breakfast.

 Choosing glossy mate,Flatter, flatter, flatter!

In doubt which one to take,Flutter, flutter, flutter!

Difficult task to do,To find a mate that's true,

Perfect in every thing,From bill to tip of wing.

 Fixing up the old nests,

Busy, busy, busty!Bringing sticks for new rests,

Hurry, hurry, hurry!Bits of moss and thread

Make a downy bedTo roll the eggs about

While they're hatching out. 

Watching the butterfly,Slily, slily, slily!

Trying like birds to fly,Silly, silly, silly!

As if a worm could vieWith birds that always fly,

Although their wings so quaintWith gaudy colors paint.

 

Singing to daisies whiteSweetly, sweetly, sweetly!And to buttercups bright,

Gayly, gayly, gayly!To snowdrops emerald set,

Crocus and violet,Cheerily, cheerily sing,

Birds of the early spring.Bird Songs

By: Martha Lavinia HoffmanThe birds are happy, singing all day through

Their little psalms of praise,And just because the sky is clear and blue,The grasses green, the trees in leafage new;

Awake my heart, and be thou happy too,These sunny days.

 Sing, as the birds sing, just for love

Of God and song;Make for His temple every leafy groveThat rears its frescoed canopy above.

Thy strength, thy freedom and thy gladness proveO'er gloom and wrong.

 One little songster taught me his lay

It was so sweet,These were the warbled words he seemed to say:

"Earth is so joyous that I long to stay,Heaven is so glorious, I would fly away."

Still doth his song repeat. 

Dreading to live, yet fearing more to die,Take thy distress

To where the birds through field and forest fly,Trilling their thankfulness to earth and sky,And without gold, or lands or honor, buy 

Such songs as this. 

The birds are singing, not for gold or fameTheir songs may bring.

O, what care they for words of slight or blame,For breathless listeners, or honored name!To empty aisles they carol just the same

Because they love to sing. 

The birds are happy, 'till their joy o'erflowsIn minstrelsy;

No wealth for them in glittering treasure glows.Awake, my heart, and know what nature knows

The ecstasy of life that is and wasAnd evermore shall be.

Had I But Wings Like ThineBy: Martha Lavinia Hoffman

Had I but wings like thine,Free bird of flight,

To scale the heights that only wings can reach,Or steer my passage o'er yon seas of light,

Whose cloudy beachIs ever shifting like the sands of time!

 Had I but wings like thine

To soar betweenThose airy deeps and lower deeps more real,

Above the wrecks and ruins of the main,The joy to feel

Of freedom on unfailing pinions mine! 

Had I but wings like thingTo visit lands

Of ancient story and undimmed renown;To roam and rest beside those glittering strands

That ages crownWith words and thoughts that lustrous gems outshine!

 Had I but wings like thine!

In yonder skies,Thy graceful form becomes a speck to view;

Had I but wings like thine I would arise,A bird of passage too,

To pass beyond this narrow prison line! 

Had I but wings like thine!'Tis vain to long;

Ah! rather let me feel those hidden wings,That to a higher, broader, flight belong;Be mine a heart that ever soars and sings

Above the wrecks of wrong!The Life of a Bird

By: Edith Matilda ThomasThou art clothed on with plumes, as with leaves,

Frond-like, and lighter than air;

Thy pinions are arrows in sheaves,That carry thee none knoweth where.

 Thou fliest, and none gives pursuit,

Thy realm both the earth and the sky;Thou hast in thy bosom a flute,

The glance of a soul in thine eye. 

Thou obeyest a sovereign powerThat sets thee on Summer's track;

Thou knowest the tide and the hourWhen to advance, or turn back.

 Into the world thou art flung,

Thou herald of rapture and light.Thou weavest a home for thy young--And none but thyself hath the sleight.

 Out of the world thou art gone,

And who shall say where is thy rest?A rapture and light are withdrawn

Into some Heaven-side nest. 

For who of my kind hath beheldWhere, stricken, were any of thine?Hast thou not been, from of old--

A spirit unscathed and divine?The Loon

By: Lew SarettA lonely lake, a lonely shore,

A lone pine leaning on the moon;All night the water-beating wings

Of a solitary loon. 

With mournful wail from dusk to dawnHe gibbered at the taunting stars--A hermit-soul gone raving mad,

And beating at his bars.The Mockingbird

By: Du FuWhat! Is the mocking bird come?

The Spring, he comes to say,The Spring is here today.

All sounds, all words he knows.His feathers preen how he will,

He is the same bird still.

 Where flowers most thickly screen,

Difficult to be seen,His varying notes deride

The topmost boughs between.If out of time he chide.

Lo! slander at your side!The Oriole

By: Andrew DowningIn robe of orange, and of black,

With mellow music in his throat,Our fairest summer bird is back

From southern woods and fields remote. 

Beneath the shading, glossy leavesThe sunset gold upon his breast--The restless, little toiler weavesHis hanging wonder of a nest!

 And, as I watch him, flashing there,

My fancy deems the orioleA wand'ring blossom of the air,

Endowed with wings, and voice, and soul!To the Birds

By: Martha Lavinia HoffmanO lark, whose joyous warbling comes

Across the flowery field to me;O red-winged leaders of the gay

And music-gifted companyWho gave the Spring's first matinee,

The blackbirds' jubilee. 

O swallows, perching on the eavesOr circling in the air;

O linnets, chirping in the vinesWhere wild rose coyly intervines

With virgin's bower and wild woodbinesThat clamber, here and there.

 O ruby-throated humming-birds,

That gem the sunbeam's gold;Perching, your ditty to repeat,

Tasting the honey-suckle sweetOr whirring near my cloistered seat,

Half timorous and half bold. 

No nightingale pours forth at eveHis famous solo here.

No sky-lark soars to yonder skyTo carol Nature's praise on high

Or gush his heaven-born rhapsodyFrom fields of upper air.

 Not unto these, for whom the bard

His richest number lends;But unto you, who build and broodBy yonder stream, in yonder wood,

Companions of my solitude,My little feathered friends.

 To you I sing, though others may

Their far-famed gifts rehearseAnd sing of sky-larks on the wing

Where none were ever heard to sing;And nightingales, triumphant bring

To grace their native verse. 

Doubtless the Scottish poet findsIn these a lasting joy.

He loves his own green spot of earth,Of heath-clad hill and foaming firth;But holds not our broad land enough

Our homage to employ. 

Ye golden warblers, darting now,Through peach-bloom canopies;Ye orioles, who seek the grove

To sing the sonnets of your love,In joyous warblings, interwove

With softest melodies. 

Ye wild canaries, carolingBeneath the alders' shade;

Ye sprightly grosbeaks, whose rich layFrom apple-boughs at close of day,

When sauntering on my homeward way,My willing feet have stayed.

 And last, but loveliest of them all,

In fields, or woods, or dales,The shy lazuli-finch, whose songIs borne the forest aisles along,

Woodsy and wild, to you belongWild hills and wooded vales.

 And many another choristerThat time would fail to tell,

Who helps to make the woods resoundWith bursts of rich melodious soundThat answering echoes from around

To one grand chorus swell. 

Long may your notes of blithesome cheerThe rounds of life beguile.

Long may your bright hues flash and shineIn this proud, happy land of mine,In this free, joyous land of thine,

Gay choir of forest aisle! 

Come when the dove's low cooing callsTo Spring's first bursting bud.

Come when the honey-bee invites,To Summer's bounteous delights

To sunny days and moonlight nightsThe fruitful field and wood.

 And when the sere and yellow leaf

Falls murmuring to the ground,Tarry, to chant creation's praise

In your own sunny, witching ways,So long as bloom and fruitage stays

Or sheltering nooks are found. 

And when my life's glad Spring is past,Its apple-blooms decayed;

And when my life's sweet Summer goesNo more its beauties to unclose;

When time has bloomed its latest roseIn loneliness to fade.

 In Autumn sheaves all gathered in

Its flame to ashes burned.I still would ask thy ministry.

Come to my grave and sing to meCreation's sweetest melodyThat man has never learned.

 

Though far away, I may not hear,Yet sweet will be the thought

That they who nearest Heaven soar,From earth's green fields and wave-beat shore,

Still sing to me when life is o'erAnd others have forgot.

The Red-Wing BlackbirdBy: William Carlos Williams

The wild red-wing black-bird croaks frog-

like though more shrillas the beads of

his head blaze over the

swamp and the o-dors of the swamp vodka

to his nostrilsStork

By: Ellen Bryant Voigt

There are seventeen species of stork.The painted stork is pink in his nuptial plumage.

The milky stork woos with his large flat bill.The marabou offers her carrion, as does the adjutant.

Due to irregular throat structure, storks have no voice;they strike their beaks together in lovesong.

Newborns know to swallow the fish head-first.In the myth of the moon-bird, storks impregnate women.

All storks adhere to serial monogamy.In the mating season, two species are migratory:

the black stork who roosts in platforms in the forests of Poland;

the familiar white stork ("good luck" in Western Europe).They are surpassed in endurance by none but the arctic tern.

They travel a thousand miles to Africa.They soar on the thermal current.They precede the rainy season.

They carry the unborn in from the marshland.If a stork nests in your chimney, a son will be born.

If a stork nests in your chimney, your house will be empty.If a stork leaves the nest, that is an omen.

If a stork leaves the nest forever, disaster will strike the area.

If a stork's shadow falls on the rosebush, grief descends to the village.

If a stork is damaged, the weather darkens.If you kill a stork, kinsmen surround you, clacking long sticks

together like knives.The Terns

By: Mary OliverThe birds shrug off

the slant air,they plunge into the sea

and vanishunder the glassy edges

of the water,and then come back,

as white as snow,shaking themselves,

shaking the little silver fish,crying out

in their own language,voices like rough bells--

it's wonderfuland it happens wheneverthe tide starts its gushing

journey back, every morningor afternoon.

This is a poemabout death,

about the heart blanchingin its folds of shadows

because it knowssomeday it will be

the fish and the waveand no longer itself--

it will be those white wings,flying in and outof the darkness

but not knowing it--this is a poem about loving

the world and everything in it:the self, the perpetual muscle,

the passage in and out, the bristlingswing of the sea.

VulturesBy: Mary Oliver

Like large darklazy

butterflies they sweep overthe glades looking

for death,to eat it,

to make it vanish,to make of it the miracle:

resurrection. No oneknows how manythey are who daily

minister so to the grassymiles, no one

counts how many bodiesthey discover

and descend to, demonstratingeach time the earth's

appetite, the unendingwaterfalls of change.

No one,moreover,

wants to ponder it,how it will be

to feel the blood cool,shapeliness dissolve.

Locked intothe blaze of our own bodies

we watch themwheeling and drifting, we

honor them and weloathe them,

however wise the doctrine,however magnificent the cycles,

however ultimately sweetthe huddle of death to fuel

those powerful wings.Waxwings

By: Robert FrancisFour Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings

chat on a February berrybush in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety-- the small wild fruit on the tall stalk-- was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four

birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse and all together--for this I have abandoned

all my other lives.Egrets

By: Mary Oliver

Where the path closed down and over,

through the scumbled leaves, fallen branches,

through the knotted catbrier, I kept going. Finally

I could not save my arms

from thorns; soonthe mosquitoes

smelled me, hot and wounded, and came wheeling and whining. And that's how I came

to the edge of the pond: black and empty

except for a spindle of bleached reeds

at the far shore which, as I looked, wrinkled suddenly into three egrets--

a shower of white fire!

Even half-asleep they had such faith in the world

that had made them-- tilting through the water,

unruffled, sure, by the laws

of their faith not logic, they opened their wings

softly and stepped over every dark thing.

Northern FlickerBy: David Chorlton

A moulted feather spirals down,

writing as it goes the story of the bird in flight

who dips between the lines and when each sentence

is complete nails a period

at the end of the fluorescent text.Marsh Hawks

By: Mary OliverIn the morning they glidejust above the rough plush

of the marshlands,as though on leashes,long-tailed and with

yard-wide wingstipped upward, like

dark Vs; then they suddenly fallin response to their wish,

which is always the same--to succeed again and again.

What they eatis neither fruit nor grain,

what they cry outis sharper than a sharp word.

At night they don't exist, exceptin our dreams, where they fly

like mad things, unleashedand endlessly hungry.

But in the daythey are always there gliding

and when they descend to the marshthey are swift, and then so quiet

they could be anything--a rock, an uprise of earth,

a scrap of fallen tree,a patch of flowers

casting their whirling shadow.The Heron

By: Theodore RoethkeThe heron stands in water where the swamp

Has deepened to the blackness of a pool,Or balances with one leg on a hump

Of marsh grass heaped above a musk-rat hole.

He walks the shallow with an antic grace.The great feet break the ridges of the sand,

The long eye notes the minnow's hiding place.His beak is quicker than a human hand.

He jerks a frog across his bony lip,Then points his heavy bill above the wood.The wide wings flap but once to lift him up.A single ripple starts from where he stood.

Blue JayBy: Robert Francis

So bandit-eyed, so undovelike a bird to be my pastoral father's favorite--

skulker and blusterer whose every arrival is a raid.

Love made the bird no gentler nor him who loved less gentle. Still, still the wild blue feather

brings my mild father.The Kingfisher

By: Mary OliverThe kingfisher rises out of the black wave

like a blue flower, in his beakhe carries a silver leaf. I think this is

the prettiest world--so long as you don't minda little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life

that doesn't have its splash of happiness?There are more fish than there are leaves

on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisherwasn't born to think about it, or anything else.

When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the waterremains water--hunger is the only story

he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.I don't say he's right. Neither

do I say he's wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leafwith its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry

I couldn't rouse out of my thoughtful bodyif my life depended on it, he swings back

over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

The ShrikeBy: Dan Thompsett

Bushtit bleeds from rusty briar of wire holding harvest-worn

and frozen field that last summer's frenzied locusts fled.

Black-capped scolding chickadees;

dark-eyed furry squeakers; beware now of the bandit-masked and hook-beaked Butcher Bird.