Blog - Wednesday Poems

Above: Varied Thrush, manipulated digital photograph

Summertime is festival season all across the province, and that includes Pender Island.
Last weekend I had a table at Art in the Orchard, a fabulous one day event that showcases
a wide variety of artists and musicians.  And this coming weekend, Ptarmigan Arts’ annual
Mosaic Festival, featuring musicians, artisans and more, will move from its former Hope Bay
location to the Pines Forest behind the community hall. 

All this music and orchards and woodlands brought to mind my poem, Love
Song of the Varied Thrush, first published in my chapbook, Level Crossing (Alfred Gustav Press).

Love Song of the Varied Thrush

The thrushes are singing again. Sharps and flats
rise from the firs, then subside – as if the trees were filled
with minstrels tuning their instruments.
                                                                  Once a year,

the varied thrush brings back its woodland chant
pitched to unravel a world of heart-broken laments.

Incantations roam the woods, like lovers lost in a maze
of sharps and flats, rising
                                             and subsiding
with the firs waving their batons to the music.

This poem is a disguised triolet. Traditionally, a triolet features a rhyme and metre pattern,
but as usual, I largely disregarded those. The eight-line form also calls for two refrains:
lines 1, 4 and 7 are one; lines 2 and 8 are the other.  Here, the two short drop lines can be
considered part of lines 3 and 7 for the purposes of locating the refrains.  Though, visually,
they suggest a 10-line poem, which, along with the radically altered refrains, is part of the disguise.

For more about triolets, Kate Braid and I discuss them, with examples, in the Rondeau Family
chapter of In Fine Form, A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry (Caitlin Press).