The Prisoner

If you have not a bird inside you,
      You have no reason to sing.
But if a pent bird chide you,
      A beak and a bleeding wing,
      Then you have reason to sing.

If merely you are clever
      With thoughts and rhymes and words,
Then always your poems sever
      The veins of our singing-birds,
      With blades of glinting words.

Yet if a Song, without ending,
      Inside you choke for breath,
And a beak, devouring, rending,
      Tear through your lungs for breath,
      Sing—or you bleed to death.

—Louis Golding (1895–1958), Sorrow of War, 1919

Poetry of spring

Springtime is a poet —
the blue sky its blank page
so vibrant green in rhyme
a different metre for every clime
birds chirping to keep the time
wildflowers yellow, red, purple divine
words dancing on tall blades of grasses
sparkling in the morning dews
no commas the flow keeps buzzing
vernal dashes & blossoming branches
on newly greening verdant trees
refrains whispering in each breeze
butterflies — floating apostrophes
ladybugs dot floral question marks
blissful bees stray stanza to stanza
seeds disperse from verse to verse
continuing a poem that’s never ended
and into summer’s colors is blended

—Terri Guillemets