National Poetry Month : Gloria Frym,

                         

Pathetic Fallacy

 

Songbirds sing not because they’re happy
          only to advertise.  Keats wasn’t envious
                     of the nightingale’s song just 
                               “happy in thy happiness.” He got it
                                         wrong though he got the rest
                                                   so right ”where but to think

                                                              is to be full of sorrow” and
                                                              “tender is the night” and

                                                   “thou wast not born
                                         for death” and “Forlorn!
                               the very word is like a bell
                     to toll me back from you
          to my sole self” says this little
chickadee at the feeder.

 

                                         (,,,,,,,.,.,.,.,paste some songbird seeds here)

 

 

 

Gloria Frym is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, short fiction, and essays, including Lies & More Lies, How Proust Ruined My Life & Other Essays, The True Patriot, Distance No Object and How I Learned. She is professor emerita of writing and literature at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She lives in Berkeley.