A Visit from Abroad
A speck went blowing up against the sky
As little as a leaf: then it drew near
And broadened. -- ' It's a bird,' said I,
And fetched my bow and arrows. It was queer!
It grew up from a speck into a blot,
And squattered past a cloud; then it flew down
All crumply, and waggled such a lot
I thought the thing would fall. -- It was a brown
Old carpet, where the man was sitting snug,
Who, when he reached the ground, began to sew
A big hole in the middle of the rug,
And kept on peeping everywhere to know
Who might be coming -- then he gave a twist
And flew away . . . . I fired at him but missed.
poem by James Brunton Stephens
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Related quotes
A Visit from Abroad
A speck went blowing up against the sky
As little as a leaf: then it drew near
And broadened. -- ' It's a bird,' said I,
And fetched my bow and arrows. It was queer!
It grew up from a speck into a blot,
And squattered past a cloud; then it flew down
All crumply, and waggled such a lot
I thought the thing would fall.--It was a brown
Old carpet, where the man was sitting snug,
Who, when he reached the ground, began to sew
A big hole in the middle of the rug,
And kept on peeping everywhere to know
Who might be coming -- then he gave a twist
And flew away . . . . I fired at him but missed.
poem by James Stephens
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Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.
quote by George Eliot
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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I flew through the sky
I flew through the sky I knew I could fly people asked me why they all got the same answer as I flew through the night I felt like a kite with a personality of my own I flew through the sky I hear someone yell like a cry I flew through the sky it was my mom she missed me much I flew through the sky as I heard crys I lowered down and held her hand we flew through the sky.
poem by Zaraya Berry
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Speck Like Me
I’m often perplex that the same God who made the heavens and the earth took time to make a speck like me.
Why would the same God who put water in the lakes, oceans and seas; want to create a speck like me?
For I can’t fly
like His birds. Neither can I shine like his sun. But low and behold He is still proud of a speck like me.
Now, in this world there are those who seem to believe that they are bigger than life, but they too are only a speck like me.
The Sun Bird
The sun bird flew high and high
for its destination was sun
but as it drew near its wings did burn
from the heat of the sun but it did not die
it fell down on the earth
and waited till its wings took rebirth
it again flew only to burn its wings and fall
towards the earth but its hope stood atall
for mythology says its divine love for sun
has given it power not to die from burn
so with patience infinite again it flew
with hopes full and wings anew
towards the sun only to burn
but it got up again and flew
towards the sun
towards its destination
poem by Anjesh shekhar
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A Question
O bird with heart of wassail,
That toss the Bacchic branch,
And slip your shaken music,
An elfin avalanche;
Come tell me, O tell me,
My poet of the blue!
What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?--
Here's MY thought of you.
A small thing, a wee thing,
A brown fleck of nought;
With winging and singing
That who could have thought?
A small thing, a wee thing,
A brown amaze withal,
That fly a pitch more azure
Because you're so small.
Bird, I'm a small thing--
My angel descries;
With winging and singing
That who could surmise?
Ah, small things, ah, wee things,
Are the poets all,
Whose tour's the more azure
Because they're so small.
The angels hang watching
The tiny men-things:-
'The dear speck of flesh, see,
With such daring wings!
'Come, tell us, O tell us,
Thou strange mortality!
What's THY thought of us, Dear?--
Here's OUR thought of thee.'
'Alack! you tall angels,
I can't think so high!
I can't think what it feels like
Not to be I.'
Come tell me, O tell me,
My poet of the blue!
What's YOUR thought of me, Sweet?--
Here's MY thought of you.
poem by Francis Thompson
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A Lonely Fallen Leaf
One fine morning
In the season of fall
The leaf pick up made its early round
And the trash was just picked
Sun was shining
The sky was blue
And the wind blew in occasional spurts…
The empty trash bin lay on its side
Rocking and rocking with every blow of the wind.
A lonely dry leaf flew by and landed on the ground
Inching forward and backward as the wind blew,
And the empty trash bin kept on rocking.
The world seemed to be in a dynamic equilibrium
With motion of all its elements synchronized.
I watched with curiosity
If the lonely leaf would be trapped in the bin
And make its way to the landfill mound!
With a final gust of wind
The leaf flew past the bin and away
The wind stopped and the bin lay still
And the leaf, I hope, will find a safe place and degrade
And contribute its share to the ecological parade.
poem by Tirupathi Chandrupatla
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A Speck Of A Speck Am I!
a speck of a speck am i!
&
a speck of a speck am i
underneath this vast dome of sky-
no millionth of a second
without changes around me;
activities incessant, both silent and noisy-
every moment new, every moment fresh;
to one who has searching senses
and penetrating vision
no end to wonder, no way to boredom-
the clouds speak in silence
the blue hugs you close
the green kisses the cheeks
the flowers communicate in colours-
endless arrays of universes
shout at their high-pitched silences
crying for our ears and attention
through mind-boggling distances-
o man, be alert and tune yourself
to the unheard voices
and keep your spirit ever in joy!
&
chandra kalaadhar
poem by Sundaram Chandrakalaadhar
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Not Much To Read
I was sitting outside
in my back yard.
The wind was blowing
but not too hard.
A cloud was pushed aside
to let through the rays,
and I got a funny feeling
it was one of those days.
A blackbird flew down
onto a nearby chair
and looked me in the eye
without a worry or care.
I didn’t make a sound
and neither did it,
but it shook it’s head
as it’s body dipped.
It then opened its beak
and gave out a sigh,
as though it read my mind
in a blink of an eye.
poem by Orlando Belo
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Homage to Hieronymus Bosch
A woman with no face walked into the light;
A boy, in a brown-tree norfolk suit,
Holding on
Without hands
To her seeming skirt.
She stopped,
And he stopped,
And I, in terror, stopped, staring.
Then I saw a group of shadowy figures behind her.
It was a wild wet morning
But the little world was spinning on.
Liplessly, somehow, she addressed it:
The book must be opened
And the park too.
I might have tittered
But my teeth chattered
And I saw that the words, as they fell,
Lay, wriggling, on the ground.
There was a stir of wet wind
And the shadowy figures began to stir
When one I had thought dead
Filmed slowly out of his great effigy on a tomb near by
And they all shuddered
He bent as if to speak to the woman
But the nursery governor flew up out of the well of Saint Patrick,
Confiscated by his mistress,
And, his head bent,
Staring out over his spectacles,
And scratching the gravel furiously, Hissed -
The words went pingg! like bullets,
Upwards, past his spectacles
Say nothing, I say, say nothing, say nothing!
And he who had seemed to be coming to life
Gasped,
Began hysterically, to laugh and cry,
And, with a gesture of impotent and half-petulant despair,
Filmed back into his effigy again.
High above the Bank of Ireland
Unearthly music sounded,
Passing westwards.
Then, from the drains,
Small sewage rats slid out.
They numbered hundreds of hundreds, tens, thousands.
Each bowed obsequiously to the shadowy figures
Then turned and joined in a stomach dance with his brothers and sisters.
Being a multitude, they danced irregularly.
There was rat laughter, Deeper here and there,
And occasionally she-rats grew hysterical.
The shadowy figures looked on, agonized.
The woman with no face gave a cry and collapsed.
The rats danced on her
And on the wriggling words
Smirking.
The nursery governor flew back into the well
With the little figure without hands in the brown-tree clothes.
poem by Thomas MacGreevy
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Bird food
I was sitting on a bale of hay
A blue jay flew my way
Robins did their bobbing worm stab
Into the still frozen ungiving earth
I saw her blue eyes in the carolina sky
They made me want to sprout wings and go fly
Where I flew was the nest I intended to fight for
I ruffuled my feathers to say nevermore for that piper on the shore
She gave me a glance and smiled to my dismay
For today the ground thawed and food was to stay
So plentiful and fine
feathery and devine
sticky and sweet
smelling like mesquite in the new found heat
I ruffulled my feathers
Showed her my regal bald head
She gave me the bird
The one I never had seen before
It looked like a snipe
So I grabbed a pillow sheet so white
The night was dark with a sliver moon
My flashlight was working last June
I gave it a shake
As to ask if by mistake but captured a loon
If spring would bring Robin to me
Why are there beggars like sparrows
In my nesting tree?
Cloud In The Fog
The cold wind cuts through my face like glass,
Along two lines on my cheeks it was exceptionally sharp.
The moon shone down on me covering me with a silver hue,
The icy ground like indigo stained my feet frosted and blue.
My fingers crackled as I tried to move them
My toes refused to move however much I told them.
My clothes threadbare, hung along my body with no other choice,
My hair scattered all over my shoulder holds the raining ice.
There is no sign of life in this isolated venue
I’ve left all hope of any possible rescue.
As the streaks of pink show up on the horizon,
The fog sets into play as appears the sun.
The sun is nothing but a show of nature,
Even it is cold with no warmth in its features.
As the fog robs me of my partial vision
I see a little cloud appearing like an illusion.
The little cloud was made up of the vast fog
Yet they felt as different as a desert and a bog.
The cloud seemed to grow as it neared me,
It held me gently and cut me free:
Of my cold bondages. It tried to melt my heart
That had frozen in the long icy past.
It defeated all the fog and protected me fruitlessly from the cold
As the fog cleared the sun shone on my face bold.
The cloud wrapped me in a beautiful gown
It swung me on itself and flew me north along.
I flew like the wind over mountains and molehills
Still frozen as ice, the wind giving me chills.
The sun drew closer, closer every second,
After rising for seven days there began my descent.
Below me loomed a warm tropical village,
I landed square on my feet before a tiny cottage.
The cloud gave me a message that it had done all this for me,
But it didn’t for once know my history.
I look south with my fog blinded eyes new to the vision
The warmth after cold is like handcuffs when out of prison.
I still stand as frozen as an idol
Even after saving me, it left me alone, the cloud.
The tropics now cut through my face like a knife
Exceptionally cold on two lines of my cheeks like ice.
poem by Isabella Francis
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Fall to Earth
The stubborn little Maple leaf
held on when all its fellows fled.
They carpeting the ground beneath
a vast lushscape of gold and red.
Leaf held on through wind and rain,
the last survivor of its race.
Leaf held on past Turkey day
maintaining there its pride of place.
Then Leaf grew lonely, I suppose-
Like the summer's final rose.
Leaf envied then the flakes of snow
Who fluttered past to their repose.
Then, just as winter came to call,
Leaf felt a tug and then a snap.
Flying, tumbling on the winds
Fall to Earth. Fade to black.
poem by John F. McCullagh
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A Season’s Carpet
I sat on a bench,
and watched the autumn leave fall.
A gentle breeze would shake them loose,
until they drifted to the ground.
Soon there is a carpet of leaves,
red, yellow and brown,
dancing with the wind
inches above the ground.
Another season ending,
as the autumn leave come drift down.
Winter would soon be here,
with another carpet grand.
This one would be a carpet white with snow,
and would stretch right across the land.
Another carpet for another season
would soon be close at hand.
poem by David Harris
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My Daddy's Not Coming Home
A siren had been a-blowing
I had heard it above the wind
And the sound of people running
On past my window pane
I took a look out of my window
There were people everywhere
But soon the streets, they were empty
And there was silence everywhere
My mother had been crying
I could see the teardrops in her eyes
And I reached out to comfort her
Then she tried to dry her eyes
She took me by the hand
We sat down so she could explain
That my daddy's not coming home, no never again
She said that there'd been an explosion
And she said that there wasn't much chance
Of my daddy coming on home
Oh my daddy's not coming home, coming home
He gave his life to keep us all warm
Through the raging winters, and the storms
Working all the hours that God had sent
So he could earn the money to pay our rent
But what a price to pay for a little coal
Two miles underground down in that hole
And what have you got at the end of it all
You're told, daddy's not coming home
No, your daddy's not coming home
Oh no, your daddy's not coming home, ever a-gain
poem by Vance Freeman
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I cannot forget the month of June
I cannot forget
The month of June
My memories
Take to my child hood
The Sun was hot red
And the sky blue
Hot winds blew
Little Cuckoo flew
In the dreaded heat
From the coziness
Of her nest
In search of water
And food
Couldn’t bear the heat
Of the sun
Fell on the ground
Gasping for breath
I saw the bird
Took her in my lap
Gave food and water
And saved its life
When evening came
The cuckoo flew back
To its cozy nest
poem by Nirantar Dr.Rajendra Tela
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Speck on a Bowl
The speck on the bowl
Tells the imperfection of the whole
Cries in its isolation to be removed
Just a speck on a bowl but how it drives me crazy!
poem by Bill Grace
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Friend to Friend
Listen closely my friend
For I have something to tell you-
Life's a butterfly's persistence
It began its struggle
Grasping edges leaf to leaf
But my inner buckle
Strapped me in from any grief
This persistent endurance
Began awakening a spark
I started seeing signs
Even in the darkest dark
Once in an event occurred
Causing a balance loss
Being that I had conquered
A cocoon formed from the toss
It emerged and flew away
To another point
When renewing that past day
I appreciate my standpoint
I will never give up
I won't back down
For I know-
Life's a butterfly's persistence.
poem by Charlie Murphy
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The Hole in the Bathroom Wall
The cottage was old, it needed some work
The walls were of crumbling stone,
The windows, like eyes in a tumbledown Kirk
Were staring, like sockets of bone;
I hadn't much money, I hadn't much choice,
'I'll take it, ' I said to the man,
If only I'd known what the future would bring
I would never have shaken his hand.
My marriage had failed, I had my young son
Just three and a half in the spring,
We bought an old bed and a table, two chairs,
Drove up there and went to move in;
The floorboards were creaky, the walls were damp,
The place was as filthy as hell,
I sat the young lad on the floor by a lamp
And I cleaned, until darkness fell.
The rooms were all empty, they echoed and stirred,
I thought I heard whispers and moans,
The ghosts of the past tried to warn me, I guess,
I couldn't interpret their groans;
I tucked up the lad after dinner, in bed,
And I wandered the house overall,
Then checked out the water, and turning my head
Saw a hole in the bathroom wall.
It wasn't that big, but was over the bath,
I could see through the damp and the rot,
It wouldn't take that much to fill it, I thought,
Then I took a long walk, and forgot;
For days I was painting, cementing and fixing
The cracks were all over the place,
But never a thought of that hole in the wall -
To my ultimate shame, and disgrace.
Outside the cottage, a paddock ran back,
All burnt up and brown in the sun,
There wasn't a leaf or a stick that was green
The summer had barely begun;
Old pieces of iron lay thick on the ground
And lizards lay under their shade,
I should have been warned, but it just didn’t dawn
On me then, to my utter dismay.
A month had gone by, the weather was dry,
So hot that we suffered like hell,
I drew a warm bath, only tepid and low
So the lad could cool off for a spell,
I reached for a towel, but nothing was there,
I remembered it out on the line,
Then ran out the back to retrieve it, and saw
What has ever since haunted my mind.
For over behind the old cottage, there slid
A brown skinned, and hideous snake,
Six foot in length it ignored me and went
For the hole where the wall was baked,
Slowly its body slid into the hole
As I stood there just shaking in fear,
My beautiful baby was sat in the bath
As his deadly opponent drew near.
I ran through the door and I screamed as I ran,
I made for the bathroom door,
Everything seemed to go suddenly slow
As I slid on the muddy, wet floor,
I finally got to the bathroom door,
Reached out, as I started to fall,
The snake had reared up, preparing to strike
From the hole in the bathroom wall.
We often remember 'the day of the snake'
Since my son has grown taller than me,
He has this aversion to lizards and snakes,
And goanna's and skinks in the tree,
We regularly walk round the cottage and fix
Any cracks, any holes, overall;
I lost my right arm from the snake as it struck
From the hole in the bathroom wall.
12 March 2008
poem by David Lewis Paget
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Death's Wings
Death was a bird that night
An ugly, vicious bird
Death's claws scratched at me
But flew away when I didn't bleed.
As it flew, darkness fell
Wings blocking out the moon.
Death screetched in frustration
When it couldn't break my skin
Death was too obvious
And realised.
Death swooped low that night
And caught her by suprise
Not a sound left its beak, nor her mouth
And death was silently satisfied.
To strike again was simple
Death had learnt a new trick.
And so began a time
That death shed its feathers.
poem by Danielle Guscott
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