The Frustration of the Teacher, the Magpie and the Ocean

Frustration
said the teacher
is a class of geniuses
with fingers tapping
on mobile phones
while I get
no response

Frustration
said the magpie
is being an extraordinary
ordinary thing of nature
but the only interest I get
is when I perch
on a horse’s head

Frustration
said the ocean
is using my stomach-
churning power
to pick bits of a wrecked
boat out of the black
fangs of rocks

Kim M. Russell, 5th April 2024

Image by Boudewijn Huysmans on Unsplash

On day five of Na/GloPoWriMo, the optional prompt asks us to take a look at Alicia Ostriker’s poem, ‘The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog’, and then write poems about how a pair or trio of very different things would perceive of a blessing or, alternatively, how these very different things would think of something else (luck, grief, happiness, etc.).

31 thoughts on “The Frustration of the Teacher, the Magpie and the Ocean”

  6. Hi Kim, Your poem got me checking about magpies and horses (I didn’t know about it) and I found that they have a thing for pecking on wounds. What I did know about magpies was from school, where we said, ‘One for sorrow, two for joy.’
    I liked your choice of the word ‘Frustration’ for today’s prompt. It’s interesting. And I liked the image of the ocean’s ‘stomach-churning’. The first stanza definitely brings home frustration :).

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    1. Thanks for the close reading and detailed comment! I actually saw a magpie land and perch on a horse’s head! On my daily walk I pass paddocks where there are lots of magpies – they come to our garden too. They are intelligent birds and my favourite corvids. You might also have guessed that I used to be teacher!

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  9. I like this, Kim. Your first stanza makes me think of a daughter’s college campus visit during which she sat in on an honors class. This was exactly her observation, that the students were attending to their phones and not the professor.

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