Quote:
Originally Posted by kimber
I want to take care of
you like a crippled bird,
gather the branches you
have scattered and lift
you gently from the ground,
hold your broken body close
and nurse the song from
your lips.
And bittersweetly I will smile when
you flap those wings once more and
listen consummately to the song I
should abhor. You're free, bird, fly away,
escape this fantasy. You've never had
trouble flying, no no, that's me.
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Hello kimber,
You haven't posted in a while so I don't know if you are coming back, but I thought I'd go ahead and give some feedback on this poem.
Your simile about the person being like a crippled bird is very sweet...especially since I've tried to nurse several young birds back to health in my life. One small question: why would the person in the poem gather the scattered branches? Why wouldn't the person just lift up the warm, little body of the trembling bird and care for it and say to heck with the branches?
The second stanza sounds more melodramatic and cliche to me because the free, flying bird simile is or has been so commonly used in poems and songs.
Several of your poems, I notice, deal with the speaker feeling the urge to care for someone who does not care for the speaker in the same way. I used to wrestle with the feelings caused by this situation until I realized that people just feel what they feel, and we can't force someone to give what she doesn't have to offer.
The poem suggests a dependence of the speaker upon the person being cared for...and that dependence makes me uncomfortable with the poem. Still, it is only human to feel some bitterness over the situation in which one loves someone who doesn't appreciate it as much as one wishes.