I was inspired to write this after reading Wallace Steven's "Thirteen Ways to See a Blackbird."
I.
His eyes were fixed on dark, flat rooftops
and the birds that moved along them.
From chimney top to chimney top, they
danced across the city majestically.
They were outrageously small,
but he would still remember them
when they surrendered to the East
in the silence of the night.
II.
Morning never rose before he'd go
running up to the peak of an empty street
where he could better view the rooftops
as the birds filed in from the sky.
Disengaging as they landed,
they kept him watching closely
until they all flew away
sending him back to his roofless home.
III.
He always wondered if others could see
the daily show throughout the sky.
And he wanted to ask a man in a suit
in a shiny black car passing through.
On one clear morning shortly after their landing,
he found a man to ask and he replied and said,
"Boy, there are no rooftops for birds to land on.
This town burned down ten years ago."
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Fabien: Thank you very much
Rieda: Yeah, I had a little difficulty writing the last stanza which I am still in the process of working on (thank you for bringing that out), excluding the last two lines. The abruptness was kind of intended. It interuppted the boys fantasies--his "theory" of the black birds, bringing him back to reality that they do not exist outside of his mind and in life, sometimes things we believe in are like that. However, that's not how the last stanza came across so I'm going to work on that. Thanks again for the criticism.
The ending sort of threw me off. Everything was calm and beautiful and descriptive and then we're talking about a man in a black suit and shiny car that said the town burned down? That confused me a bit.
Otherwise I have a pretty good meaning of the poem. Just clear the meaning up a little in the last stanza and this should turn out really nice.
Keep it up!
~Rieda
So yes I was kind've confused after reading this, maybe if I read Wallace Steven's work it would help.
Putting the confusion aside, I enjoyed it, I think that black biirds are highly symbolic creatures. Some people see them and think that they are messengers of bad news. I just think that they represent omens.
This piece was mysterious, and has a sort of energy to it, this isn't an insult, it's meant to be an off-beat compliment.