Tuesday Poem: More About Sparrows—An Excerpt from “Thornspell”
“… He turned away, kicking through a deeper drift, and saw
that there was a girl standing beneath the bare crown of an
elder tree. A sparrow fluttered into the branches, followed
by another, and then a third, until there was a small flock of
them preening and fluttering their feathers above her head.
Her chemise and skirt, brown as the sparrows, blended with
the dreary colors in the garden”
~ from Thornspell, Knopf, 2008
—
I have been posting few poems on sparrows since I completed the ekphrastic poetry series because, as I said last week on Twitter, “I’m into sparrows right now.” Just to mix things up a bit for today, I thought I’d include an extract from Thornspell, which features—yes, you’ve guessed it—sparrows. 🙂
—
To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.
It’s interesting, Helen, that here in Australia where sparrows are also an introduced species, they are not despised in the way some other introduced birds (such as starlings) are. It’s hard to dislike a sparrow!
It is hard to dislike a sparrow, although William Carlos Williams’ extended poem on the subject might comprise a sterner view. It’s interesting how people don’t like starlings, but I am fond of them as well, I must admit, as well as the smaller native birds, the waxeyes and fantails, that I get to see quite often.
Sparrows are the unobtrusive members of the bird world. They just do their thing and try to always maintain a low profile. Sparrows despise Kim Kardashian!
He-he, I “like”, Andrew 😉