Yabba Dabba Doo

 

Photo © Jennifer Wagner

Yabber-yabber, do

bird,

it’s no ordinary thing

to hang a song in a tree,

to make a valentine of music,

sweet songbird,

on the vine.

 

Here I am

all blush and flush and flutter,

raptured full and giddy,

on your golden, wild wine.

 

 

© 2025 Jennifer Wagner

 

 

Again for Shay's word garden word list (still open for linking):  flutter, giddy, golden, wild, yabber-yabber, and for Dora's dverse poetics reimagining (closed/too late for linking).

 

Photo:  French horn hanging from a tree at the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun.

magnitude of creation (1)

Photo © 2014 Jennifer Wagner

the chickadees

and nuthatches

clap their wings

against their sides

zip, dip

snip

seeds

from the feeder

look

and dip,

snip again

twist

fly       a          w         a          y

and a moment later

are

back again

all day long

inch

by inch 

we get closer, to the window

watch them

watch us

watch them

face to beak

and learn

in some small way

how each

small thing

is never

small

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner

This summer I visited the Poetry Foundation in Chicago.  On display were some of Tony Fitzpatrick’s drawings The Secret Birds.  He says his grandmother used to say, “For the price of a piece of bread you can hear God sing.”

Poets United: The Poetry Pantry

Varied Thrush

At the beginning,

ends,

and afters,

(the dawn,

the dusk,

the eclipsing of the rain shower),

you call:

1. wake up

2. calmly be

3. rejoice

I think you’re right.

© 2014 Jennifer Wagner

We hear the Varied Thrush from our house every day.  I haven’t gotten a photo (they are quick to hide), but they are pretty orange and bluish-gray birds with a call much like a referee’s whistle.

For the open link at Poets United Poetry Pantry

Nightjar

You can hear them,

like little ghosts

haunting the air at night,

though we don’t have

the blue note whippoorwill

in our evergreens.

If you’ve ever hummed a dry, lonesome aria

from your own warbling wind struck throat

you can hear them—

in the hollowed out whisper-choke,

strummed endless in black on wet pillowed nights,

haunted and hidden.

Yes, you can hear them, even here,

always, when you’ve known lonely,

so ink-dark and bled deep to bone.

Or maybe they can hear you.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

At dVerse host Tony Maude has invited us to write to any FFA or MTB prompt they’ve offered in the past.  I chose Victoria Slotto's Literary Allusion.  One of my all time favorite short stories is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving.  I also love the haunting song Midnight in Montgomery by Alan Jackson.  Each work references the beautifully eerie call of the nightjar bird, the Eastern Whip-poor-will.  I have alluded to each work in my piece.  Happy year 3 dVerse! 

Thief

Steller's Jay

plumage

in silver blue,

sooty crest of charcoal

worn like a thief’s mask, and it’s true,

she will

rob the songbirds’ freshly twigged nests

of eggs and chicks when seeds

and ash berries

run low

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

A butterfly cinquain for Poetry Jam:  A Bird’s Eye View.  I don’t have my own photo of a Steller’s Jay but we see them often around here.  They are beautiful, loud and predatory.  For more about the Steller’s Jay go here.