First Light Is Still Falling
“Birds in the Sky” Bardic Poetry by Joseph S. Plum
Welcome:
Greetings and welcome to American Bardic Poet.
“Birds in the Sky”
This week I share a poem I love to recite early in the morning. I can imagine the birds flying, the first light still falling. I remember Dad waking me & my brothers up early to watch the sunrise when we were kids. We’d wrap ourselves in blankets and stumble outside, following him to the best spot on the hill. It was dark when we started and by the time we’d shaken off our sleep, there was pink all around.
The poet continues to wake up and watch the sunrise almost every morning. It’s part of his creative process and, I think, his spiritual journey as well. I can’t remember the last time I woke up and sat on the Earth to watch the sunrise, the pink sinking into my soul.
Perhaps it’s time to do this again.
Good journey,
(The poet’s daughter.)
birds in the sky
through the sky
first light
is still falling
striking the eye
with the hope
of reclaiming a promise
whose workings open
into the center
of a being
whose finest thoughts
are like birds
in the sky
turning and wheeling
arising in unison
yet conceived apart
a pathway of liberation
leading directly
through migration
into a fire
beacon burning
in the heart
Read about the poet and the bees here.
Read my post regarding punctuation and editing of the poems here.
Read the poem “Wild Wisdom” and a short essay I wrote about the forest here.
This is a page from the book, I Believe in Seeds: Affirmations for Rewilding, made possible by a grant from the BeWildReWild Fund at Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. This book combines my watercolor paintings with Dad’s poems, and gave me a chance to try something different with punctuation. Also, it was such a beautiful moment when Dad saw my paintings and realized his poems were part of his daughter’s artwork.
I’m grateful.
I’ll write more next week. Hope to see you again then. Please consider sharing this post with someone you think may be interested in Dad’s poetry.
🙏🏼 Thank you for gathering here. May it be a blessing. 🙏🏼
About the Poet
Joseph S. Plum is a poet in the bardic tradition. He lives off-grid in rural Iowa and composes his unique chant-like oral poetry for fascinated audiences around the world. Joe has over 16 hours of oral poetry memorized in his head. He pulls from this collection of rhyming lines to compose poems according to the energy of the audience listening. Joe does all of this without writing the poems down on paper or holding any notes.
Joe’s daughter, Emily Lupita, typed up his poems over the years and launched Dreaming Deer Press to publish his work. He now has nine poetry books for sale on Amazon that can be purchased on Joe’s website - here.
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