Blog Description:
Join Peter White Public Library in celebrating reading, literature, and the diverse people who make up our home in the Upper Peninsula.
March 19, 2025: Andrew Ciupak, "A Gentle Songbird"
A Gentle Songbird
by: Andrew Ciupak
A gentle songbird, white and pristine,
Perched contently in a cage of gold.
Soft brown eyes, glowing with empathy,
Her heart sings of love- pure and serene.
Listen--the songs never grow old.
She sways with joy in gilded chains,
Merry within her quiet reign.
Yet when the first snow starts to fall,
She knows she must go—must travel far.
Fluttering free, light as a fairy,
To sunlit shores where palm trees stand tall.
Her keeper watches, silent, still—
Face as pale as winter’s chill.
The plows grind on, and the sky turns gray.
Ice spreads, and life gives way.
The world holds its breath, frozen in wait,
Until one day…
The songbird returns, with flowers and warmth,
The bracelet shining at her slender wings.
She steps on her keeper’s open hand,
Singing her song, soft and bright.
She flutters, she dances- to a waiting smile.
The sun burns brighter, the frost melts away.
She heals the wounds, as if she was never gone.
A story of letting go, setting love free.
Andrew Ciupak, 15, is a sophomore at Negaunee High School. He enjoys electronics, deep thinking, and spending time with his beloved dog, Kodiak. He is a Yooper.
Popular posts from this blog
Aunt Alice by: Beverly Matherne Aunt Alice chooses a strand of pink floss separates it slowly. She snips a piece puts its tip into her mouth pursing her lips drawing it out priming it for easy passage into the needle’s eye. Aunt Alice shows me how to hold the embroidery hoop in my left hand drive the needle up from the back with my right pull it through the fabric lifting the thread all the way up then driving the needle down reaching for it from the back and pushing it up again over and over running stitch back stitch chain stitch my little fingers tired my little fingers pricked and pricked again. Aunt Alice shows me how to tongue my little wounds ease the sting stop the blood its smack of salt and iron lets me take a break after each mishap boosts my courage. When Aunt Alice thinks I’m ready she chooses two strands of floss cornflower blue for blossoms forest green for leaves. The petal of a small flower guides my d...
V In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic. I hear my grandmother in the white-throated sparrows. In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. And my grandfather in the red pines he planted, taller than four pickups end to end. A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic. And my father in the red pines he planted, now taller than he was. In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. And my mother in the memory she’s losing. A census enumerator drives up in a rusted Prius, glad he has work during the pandemic. I tell him I came up here to quarantine, the only one. In just a minute I’m going out in the boat. Excerpt from “June 2020,” On Natural Things by Beth Roberts, Harvard Square Press, 2024 Spotted deer What do you call it when you drove with your dad out to the forties so he could see if you could see deer, and you balanced coffee in teacups while the truc...
Joy to the World by: Martin Achatz Joy is elusive. I have a poet friend who’s been chasing it for years. Hers is an albino whitetail that haunts the woods and cemeteries and trails around our town on the shores of an arctic inland sea. Ever since she moved here, she’s longed for a close encounter with this scrap of winter, its marble haunches and swan neck. I often wonder if, when she sees it, she will burst into blossom, shudder into glory like a peacock. Another friend, a physicist, searches the heavens for joy, magnifies with binoculars and telescope the shadows of lunar craters, blurs of comet tails, flashes of Geminids flinting through December stars. When he finds it, will he blaze like an aurora, an emerald waterfall at the birth of night? Still another friend listens for joy in the green cantatas of birds, The whistle of Black-capped Chickadees, rubber-ducky squeaks of nuthatches, weirdo-weirdo-weirdo ...
Comments
Post a Comment