Gael Stuart

The Silver Sage

Are you ready? Come on along and read some homespun poetry as well as a jot and tittle regarding distinguished poets and their works. Gael offers a positive balance of her own nostalgia notes and poetic meanderings with those of others. [Editor's note: Gael no longer contributes to Silver Planet, but we have made her archived blog entries available as a service to our readers.]


Posted 03/27/2009

The Bluebird

By Gael Stuart

Do you “Twitter” or “Facebook”? Can you imagine asking that question 30 years ago? What a blank look you would have gotten. Social networking has been around for a while, but it seems lately I find more and more of the over-55 crowd involved in “tweet” or “facetime” communications.

As I was writing a tweet on Twitter.com recently, I began thinking about tweeting birds. I guess that’s how my Silver Sage mind connects words of entirely different meaning. Curiously enough, my meandering wordplay caused me to recall a delightful poem by one of my favorite Massachusetts poets, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).

Aptly titled "The Bluebird," it made me grin to remember how my eyes flew open when I first read the words inspiriting habiliments to describe his feathers. The poem tells us the BB (bluebird) has inspiriting habiliments (his plumage inspires courage). In today’s lingo, that would simply be too many characters to fit a text box. Since I love language, I wish we used polysyllabic words more often. But in our technically savvy, acronymized, and abbreviated world, we like to minimize our adjectives. Regardless of what U R thinking about that comment, I hope U enjoy the poem!

I too “sometimes shout for joy to nobody” when I carry on in seraphic delight at the beckoning spring skies and melting snows of the Rockies. Although we do not have the little blue thrush known as a bluebird residing in my climate zone, we do have the majestic crested blue jay to squawk his tweedling spring song to the sky.

The Bluebird

Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!


By Gael Stuart
The Silver Sage Blog

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