A Robin’s Protest

After lively protesting all summer long,
at first ablaze and full of umbrage,
morning is broken by a different song.

The melody falls with the foliage,
in falling becomes more sorrowful
to see Earth going into freefall:

leaves, acorns, a robin’s canticle.

Kim M. Russell, 24th September 2020

20,887 Singing Bird Stock Photos, Pictures & Royalty-Free Images - iStock

My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the bar: Protest Poetry

Grace, our host for this Thursday’s Meeting the bar, reminds us that poetry ‘is a popular art form at protests and rallies’ and that ‘unlike political speech, poetry cannot afford to misuse language. Should a poet do otherwise, they sacrifice the very reason for a poem’s existence. Because above all else the language used in a poem must be precise and accurate’. She says that the poet ‘must therefore labour over exact, precise articulation – since the poet understands that every word used creates a world, creates a meaning and that each word added or removed alters this meaning, and alters the world’.

Grace comments that throughout history, ‘poetry has always spoken in the most challenging, tragic, and formative circumstances. Poets have been at the forefront of wielding language to create change for the people’, and she has shared such a poem by Audre Lorde, and pointed us in the direction of the Poetry Foundation, where there is a section of Poems of Protest, Resistance and Empowerment. 

Today we are writing Protest Poems with a theme (e.g. voting, social justice, peace & war, violence, women’s rights, human rights, environment, pandemic, etc), which may be about as local as our communities, or about our countries, or about the world in general.

56 thoughts on “A Robin’s Protest”

    1. I often wonder what has got under those little robins’ feathers, Grace. They never seem to stop singing! The autumn song is not as cheerful as the one in spring and summer and it made me wonder what they must think about everything that is going on in the world.

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  9. Very apt, bang-on, letting one of the smallest among us add their voice to the eco-din, to the protests falling on dead greedy ears. Your brevity works well too.

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    1. Thank you, Christine! I’m just about to read and comments some more, although I’m worried I might not get finished as we are current under siege from torrential rain and gales, which could cut the power any time.

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    1. Birds are so delightful to watch. There’s not one to be seen today – we have torrential rain and gale force winds. My cats are hiding under the bed and I’m expecting a power cut any time.

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    1. We have gales force winds and torrential rain along the North Sea coast and the robins are holed up somewhere keeping safe. I was hoping to go to a Macmillans coffee day today, I was even given a 45 minute slot, but it’s not safe to go out. I’ll just have to make myself one!

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  19. kaykuala
    The melody falls with the foliage,
    in falling becomes more sorrowful
    to see Earth going into freefall:

    Despite a welcomed change, the beauty of songs is still not enough to overcome the woes restricting our freedom of choice. Yes, Kim, a real pity of the reality of the situation.!

    Hank

    Liked by 1 person

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