Albatross

This is a poem I wrote last year, lost, and then recently found again.  It is entitled Albatross. Hope you enjoy!


A feather afloat
Just one of but many
On a creature a-soar
Over waters so plenty
A landscape of blue
Fills up every sight
Both above and below
With occasional white
Skimming the waves
On age-wisened wings
With scarcely a flap
Thanks to day's thermal rings
For this age old bird
Days float by slow
For the Albatross rules
These oceans of old

-Daniel McAdams-

Birds of Passage

This is one of my all time favorite poems.  It speaks not only to those of us who like birds and birding but also to those of us who enjoy poetry and great works of art.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is an American poetry icon, one of the greatest poets who ever lived.  He is one of my all time favorite poets.  Enjoy!

Birds of Passage

Black shadows fall
From the lindens tall,
That lift aloft their massive wall
Against the southern sky;

And from the realms
Of the shadowy elms
A tide-like darkness overwhelms
The fields that round us lie.

But the night is fair,
And everywhere
A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
And distant sounds seem near,

And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night,
Swift birds of passage wing their flight
Through the dewy atmosphere.

I hear the beat
Of their pinions fleet,
As from the land of snow and sleet
They seek a southern lea.

I hear the cry
Of their voices high
Falling dreamily through the sky,
But their forms I cannot see.

O, say not so!
Those sounds that flow
In murmurs of delight and woe
Come not from wings of birds.

They are the throngs
Of the poet’s songs,
Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,
The sound of winged words.

This is the cry
Of souls, that high
On toiling, beating pinions, fly,
Seeking a warmer clime,

From their distant flight
Through realms of light
It falls into our world of night,
With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow