Bird’s Eye View
As if I work for him—how could he know
the weight of all my cares?—a robin hops
towards me from the border; then he stops
to watch me push my mower to and fro.
He looks for worms along the fresh-cut line,
while I seek inspiration for a gem
to stun my critics—how I’ll dazzle them!
The bird has his agenda; I have mine.
My chore complete, I settle down to wring
some moral from our interaction. Now
a sharp deflating insight has unfurled
its wings. (I
had been contemplating how
absurd it was for such a little thing
to think himself the centre of the world.)
Comment by Mr. Gwynn:
A good, solid Italian variant with a clear-cut volta. My only real quibble with the diction is with “unfurled,” which I associate more with something rolled (like a flag) than folded (wings). But I suppose other poets have had wings unfurl (ah, “It Came upon a Midnight Clear”!). I notice that two sonnets have looked for rhymes with “world,” which is a fairly tough word to rhyme well, especially at a sonnet’s conclusion. Better here than in a couplet, though. “a gem / to stun my critics” seems a little defensive instead of just “readers,” and wouldn’t a gem perhaps “blind” rather than stun? “the weight of all my cares” sets up a slightly “heavier” preconception of the speaker’s cares than the whimsical nature of the rest of the poem can support. For no good reason, I’d probably say “the mower.” Overall, I like this for its ironic balance and sound analogy: bird is to man as man is to . . . God?