ah, let me ruminate... yesterday, Beth noticed that the nest of wrens in the eaves of our porch were more noticeable: you could see their little heads sticking up. bumptious artisan that I am, I grabbed my camera. 1st picture, I held the camera over my head, and got evidence of the wrenlings but hardly a great shot. I climbed onto the railing and managed 2 more shots. the flash went off both times, which I rued as being rude. as I attempted a better position, one of the chicks levitated, as it seemed, from the nest and... well, it plummetted. it was like a flight, resembling (too) maple tree seeds, what are they called? the things you, as a kid, might've split and stuck to your nose. or maybe you didn't... anyway, that whirligig downward spin. thud. I felt like I was just injected with Michael Vick's soul, I mean, did I need to assault the nest for the sake of some half-assed photograph? Beth told me to return it to the nest. we have a friend of considerable ornithological expertise (a bird, wren maybe, was named by him(!!!)) who asserts that it aint nothing to do so, won't taint the little ones. so I tried to capture the wee bit of bird. it looked a little stunned but my agitation and clumsiness as I tried to collect it were enough to send it skittering. its skittering could fairly be placed in the category of flight. Beth, watching, finally said let it go. mom and pop were vocally about. I felt rather like crud but released from the effort. I took my guilty feelings elsewhere but soon Beth came to say that the other 2 chicks left the nest. mother wren had corralled the 3 and the learning process was go. okay, so this long nature study really wants to be about writing. about poetry even. because think of the flux of feelings involved, and how a writer comprises such. furthermore the symbolic 'facts' that spring up. okay, yeah so well like, we accept poetry as a transformation, don't we? or translation. we see words as experience. sometimes this just means congestive heart failure. too much fluid overfills the possible breath. in this metaphor, the fluid is a potent sentiment. o love! o death! o inadequacy! writers try to wring the bejesus out of that sentimental event. the writer thinks: I felt something and must share... this is a pet called Bad Poetry. it's the conscious clicking of gears that is the trouble. Blake's Songs of In and Ex aren't thunk thru positions in sentiment, they are rare scrapings of essential skin. likewise the mosquito bite clarity of Dickinson. I'm not trying to put up barriers here, in matters of canon or style. the event of those chicks taking flight was brusque monstrance of momentum. you have your own select gathering. 2 centuries ago, Keats had his nightingle. terms differ now. plenty of writers still posit central motifs like, say, chicks floundering into flight (or death). but there's a less direct approach now. my being situates in the motivation factor, which is emotional, sometimes stupidly enthralled with the peopled response. I shan't write a poem that baldly places wren and me in poetic 2-step, I've weeded that impulse from my directive. that doesn't mean I wasn't affected. and poetry, I daresay, springs from that very fount. still, I mean. e'en tho I might dodge the possible exploit of emotive meaning, that I might proceed with procedures, that I might seem to hand the steering wheel to another driver. th energy transfer occurs, even if the lofty sentiments that Sam'l Johnson asserted as poetic positive aren't painted on this writer's forehead. this morning, as I left for work, a wren chick sprung from under the porch and lighted on the car. a wee frailty building life. it survived its 1st lonesome night in the world of predators, there's the one fact. I think I look at birds because they are of The Poetry. because they are tonic note in some chord of which my writing somehow... I don't mean nature poetry or that, I mean the instance of their fact, read by me. those instances of facts could be anything, o rare writer, anything that brings you to bear the weight. I'm saying poetry is sprung from the world but not that it details the world's distractions. I'm not suggesting a right poetry, only noting a means and process. I could, this night, write a poem involved in all the spurts of emotional response that arose as I engaged the bird moment, or have done it yestreen. yatta yatta yatta. hey, let's get rid of the obvious. the obvious has done its job. let's see poetry go beyond pious NYers identifying their moments in the flux. for instance. and so on. metaphors are nice until they die. similes need to be trimmed daily. why are you involved in your writing? you there, I mean, the one with all the words in your head. why are those yourwords? I posit no answers, but like how things bump up against, in words and all.