I will, you said
I will.
And again, I will.
As for me,
I will keep reminding you,
Did you?
Did you?
Did you do
what you said
you would do?
Once I heard a poet reading
in a secret garden.
A catbird
in the tree above him
began to sing.
The poet was annoyed.
I will start over! he said.
The bird stopped singing
and flew off.
Without the bird
It was just words like
I will / I will / I will . . .
.....................................
This is a poem about procrastination, putting things off, which can morph into putting life off. The Catbird is neither sweet nor lyrical. It isn't the bird that you might want to show up to sing during your reading. It is an outspoken bird, not an ambient bird or perhaps not even one who understands poetry! But having a bird join you when you are reading your poetry is a rare thing. In TS Eliot's Wasteland the nightingale sings in the desert with "inviolable" voice. (Inviolable means secure from violation or profanation, secure from assault or trespass, as in an inviolable sanctuary or an inviolable spirit, or voice. In this poem, the "secret garden" was behind an ashram (which was also a magical bookstore). The secret garden was an inviolable space, a sacred space, a rare thing in the middle world, whereas nature is rife with sacred places. So when the catbird shows up to sing with this poet, he or she is bringing her inviolable voice to an inviolable space but her song is not sweet or nuanced and some of the audience might have agreed with the poet, that the catbirds exuberant song was not welcome. But others of the audience might have been thrilled to be witness to the catbird's contribution. What does the incident of the catbird and the poet have to do with the theme of procrastination? I think it has to do with the question of, when do we keep going as opposed to starting over? When we start something, such as reading a poem for an audience, or something like living our life, it might not look exactly like we would wish; but maybe the message here is, a catbird is still a bird, and its joining its inviolable voice to the reading, is still a blessing. And if such a miraculous thing happened to me, I, for one, would keep reading, probably with tears in my eyes.
(Article changed on Aug 27, 2022 at 6:10 PM EDT)
