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The Osprey

8/30/2013

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We currently live on the Intracoastal Waterway in Treasure Island, FL. We have been in our this house for nine years and every year around this time, we are joined by an osprey (also called a fish hawk) who sits on the cross of the church, across our little finger of the Intracoastal, with his eyes on the water below. I’ve tried taking pictures of him (I always imagine it to be a him), but since I don’t yet own a camera with a telephoto lens, it's hard to see the osprey in the picture. Nevertheless, here he is, looking like a finial atop the church cross.

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We have named this osprey Ozzy (very original, I know) assuming it was the same osprey coming back year after year. But last year we had a surprise because the osprey had a different call or keen. It still keened but it was slightly higher and the end part was different too. OMG, we thought, it has been a different osprey every year! And this year has proven our theory to be true: this year's osprey is gigantic, so much so, that at first, we thought it was an eagle. You can clearly see a great patch of white on its neck and head. In former ospreys, this white patch was hardly noticeable from this distance. Breaking with tradition, we call this year’s osprey, Big Boy instead of Ozzy, because a big boy he certainly is. His keen is different too. It sounds like he struggles to keen, we have joked, because he is obese and so it is an effort to make his trademark sound.

I have read a lot about ospreys and one fact is quite startling.  Sometimes, when the osprey dives for a fish, it miscalculates the size and, if the fish is too large, the fish will pull the osprey under and carry it along. The osprey, of course, drowns. Sometimes fishermen will later catch the fish with the osprey talons still embedded.

I find this to be quite amazing and it makes me marvel on the often perilous nature of living.

In any case, here is a poem I wrote about the osprey, a somewhat dark poem since we had just moved to this townhouse community and nature seemed less than wild, trimmed as it was, to the very core of its existence. Being on the water is nice, but even our inlet is man-made. We like our nature a little wilder and we often drive to wilderness areas to get our fix of wild nature. But the ospreys hunting near our home have totally saved us year after year. In any case, the juxtaposition of wild nature (osprey) vs. humans editing wild nature in our complex, is what prompted this poem.

The Osprey

We tamed the world, I know.
It needed to be done, because…
well, there must have been a reason.
It frightened us, perhaps.

December comes in with mild air,
soft breezes over a captured inlet
of still water.
Somebody rolled the sun in gauze,
its fire muted; a clever bit
of engineering.
Sit quietly, listen:
machines hum behind the scenes
keeping it all in place.

Twilight descends across the inlet.
A lamppost’s gentle glow
unfurls over shadowed depths.
An osprey perched on the post
beats its wings powerfully,
then plunges toward the water’s surface--

there are no screams
while the world shatters in unstrung fragments.

(c) B.J. Lee All Rights Reserved
First published in Long Story Short, December 2010

Here's a link that tells a little bit more about the osprey.

Tara at A Teaching Life has the roundup today!
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The Ballad

8/22/2013

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A big thank you to Betsy at I Think in Poems for hosting Poetry Friday today!



I enjoy writing in forms and learning about forms and have written several ballads. The ballad is defined as:

“a form that comes in four-line verses, usually alternating between four and three beats to [the] line. The word comes from ballare, the Italian for “to dance’ (same root as ballet, ballerina and ball).  ~ Stephen Fry, “The Ode Less Travelled.” 

Another important aspect of the ballad is that it tells a story.

This one is about my naughty toy poodle, Lulu, may she rest in peace.

The Ballad of the Naughty Poodle
By B.J. Lee

I’ll tell you a story of a dog in her glory--
the naughty toy poodle named Lulu.
But first let me say, do not get in her way
or she may put one over on you too.

Although she’s petite and may strike you as sweet,
believe me, her mind’s always cooking
up schemes to sneak by and eat my potpie
the minute she sees I’m not looking.

I tell her to stay but she does not obey
and makes her way down floor by floor.
She shreds paper towels with claws like an owl’s. 
When spotted, she speeds out the door.

She’ll stretch and she’ll yawn but then once I am gone, 
Lulu tips over the trash.
On the floor I find mustard mixed in with the custard.
It’s clear she’s been having a bash!

She lands with a leap in the composting heap
no matter how loudly I yell.
I shout, “You're in trouble, come here on the double.”
I hold my nose
--wow--does she smell!

I give her a scrub in the claw-footed tub.
She splashes the suds in my face.
When I grab for a towel, she lets out a howl
and runs away like it’s a race.

Yes, this small, dirty dog redefines the word ‘hog.’
She’s always escaping my clutches.
And as hard as I try, the house is a sty
--
just some of the little swine’s touches.


 
© 2010 B.J. Lee All Rights Reserved
First published in “Umbrella Journal’s Bumbershoot Annual” August, 2010

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Here's the little stinker. She looks all innocent, but she is definitely thinking her Machiavellian thoughts and plotting her next dastardly scheme!


The ballad comes to us from song and folk traditions and many, many popular songs are ballads. Here is the first stanza from “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumme.”
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.



Read the rest of the poem here

© 1976 by Gordon Lightfoot




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photo courtesy of NOAA
Typically a ballad will rhyme either abab or abcb if it is in quatrains.  Gordon has chosen the latter and so have I.

Some books and websites define ballads as being typically written in iambic meter

daDUMdaDUMdaDUMdaDUM
daDUMdaDUMdaDUM


but Gordon broke that rule, giving us anapestic meter:

dadaDUMdadaDUMdadaDUMdaDUMda (with an extra syllable at the end— a feminine ending)

My poem, above, is also written in anapestic meter (with some feminine endings as well as internal rhyme).

I have also seen ballads arranged in sestets (6 lines to a stanza) . A good example  is ”The Walrus and the Carpenter” by Lewis Carrol (this one is iambic):

The Walrus and the Carpenter
were walking close at hand.
They wept like anything to see
such quantities of sand: 
“If this were only cleared away,”
they said, “it would be grand.” 



Read the rest of the poem here

And, I have seen ballads written with seven beats to the line, although arguably, each line could be broken down into two lines of four and then three beats.  Here is a stanza from Robert Service’s “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” (anapestic):

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou. 



Read the rest of the poem here

No matter what decision you make regarding format and meter, ballads are a fun choice if you wish to tell a story in your poem! 

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Sailing

8/15/2013

30 Comments

 
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Since August is quite the sweltering month in Florida, I’ve been finding myself day-dreaming about our sailing days on the Parker River in Newbury, MA, many years ago now, but still fresh in my mind - the cool ocean breezes full in my face.

I love to write poetry using forms. This poem is a mask poem, where the poet takes on the persona (wears the mask) of an inanimate object or animal. Enjoy!

Moored
By B.J. Lee

Do not keep me
tied at this mooring.
My rope strains
while green water whispers
against my hull.
Let’s be off to the deep places
where I can feel
the wind at my back,
the sun on my white face,
and I’ll give you

the ride of your life.

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For more Poetry Friday, please visit http://stepsandstaircases.tumblr.com/
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Blue Window

8/8/2013

51 Comments

 
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This is my first blog post. You may wonder, why Blue Window? I’ll tell you. I was once in a rock and roll band, believe it or not, and one of the songs our band sang was “Helpless” by Neil Young. I loved these lyrics, especially:

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,

Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky
Throwing shadows on our eyes….


Very nice! Thank you, Neil!

Several years later, I was reading, “A Writer’s Diary” by Virginia Woolf (edited by Leonard Woolf) and I kept finding haiku in her words. For example:

A very fine skyblue day--
my window completely filled
with blue for a wonder


Lovely! Thank you, Virginia!

This prompted me to write my own blue window haiku:

First day of spring--
my window
filled with blue


Then, on a trip to the South of France, I became obsessed with photographing windows with blue shutters.


And so, always being inspired by “blue” windows, I chose it for my blog title.

 

© B.J. Lee, 2011 all rights reserved
originally published in “Berry Blue Haiku,” March, 2011

51 Comments

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    Author

    B. J. Lee is a children’s author and poet. Her picture book, There Was an Old Gator Who Swallowed a Moth, is launching with Pelican Publishing on February 15, 2019. She has poems in 25 poetry anthologies published by  Little, Brown, Wordsong, BloomsburyUK, National Geographic, Otter-Barry Books, Pomelo Books, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. She has worked with anthologists Lee Bennett Hopkins, J. Patrick Lewis and Kenn Nesbitt. She has written poems for such children’s magazines as Spider, Highlights and The School Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @bjlee_writer.

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    Coming in 2018 National Geographic's book of US: 200 Poems of People, Places, and Passions (edited by J. Patrick Lewis.)
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    Includes my poem, "A Streetcar Named Happily Ever After"

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