High, a Black Bird
a crow or raven flying high above the back fields behind my home in Shapleigh, Maine
on November 9, 2014, sketched on November 10, 2014
7" x 5", Winsor & Newton watercolors, #3 graphite, on 140 lb.
Fabriano Artistico cold press fine grain 100% cotton watercolor paper
unframed, sold framed, $100 plus $5.50 sales tax plus $9.50 shipping = $115.00
The Song of High, a Black Bird
By Bruce McMillan
In the sky of sunset Shapleigh
'midst the colors warmly turning,
flew a black bird, was it singing,
to a sun low dipping, falling?
Was it a crow or raven, black,
dark flying into no light night?
Who knows? The avian, High, knows,
but not the we down far below.
Bird swimming in sun's setting sky,
soaring, flapping, rising, are you
singing down from far, far, above,
High, above the forest's tree tops?
No matter for the song High sings,
is not a song at all. It calls
a call, just a call, no notes, for
it merely caws, or does it squawk?
poem © 2014 Bruce McMillan
written in trochaic tetrameter
not for reuse without permission
The noted poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha, written in trochaic tetrameter, tetrameter simply meaning that the poem has four trochees, a long syllable, or stressed syllable, followed by a short, or unstressed, one, DUM da DUM de DUM da DUM de, was published on this day, 159 years ago, on November 10, 1855.
