Imagine a Bird (poem)

I hope there's no paywall to prevent you reading this article in the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/29/opinion/eliot-waste-land-poetry.html

My response to it is this poem, which I wrote in 2014. (Yes, the photo at the bottom is of a cardinal). 

 

Imagine a bird

The backyard, mud and snow, sad grey-green grass.
Imagine a bird impossibly red in this monochrome landscape.

I remember a woman in a red coat
surrounded by schoolboys in blue blazers.

Words spill from me,
cadence and echo carving time.

I want to paint an impossibly red robin
ablaze in the dimming light.

 (Copyright W Kirchmeir 2014)