'Like a piece of ice on a hot stove'

 

“Like a piece of ice on a hot stove a poem must ride on its own melting ... Read it a hundred times, it will forever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance.  It can never lose its sense of a meaning that once unfolded by surprise as it went.”

 – Robert Frost

 

This morning, unlike the bird that bothers Frost in the poem below, a bird on our roof was not creating music, but noise.  It was a Flicker that decided to “mark” its territory – or maybe it was attract a mate – by drumming with its beak on one of our vent pipes. 

 

But after giving it further thought, I decided a bird on the roof is still better than no bird at all.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Frost’s,

 

A Minor Bird

 

I have wished a bird would fly away,
And not sing by my house all day;

Have clapped my hands at him from the door
When it seemed as if I could bear no more.

The fault must partly have been in me.
The bird was not to blame for his key.

And of course there must be something wrong
In wanting to silence any song.