My poem titled “The Pelican”, which I posted on Facebook, and here on Blogspot
earlier this month (as my poem of the month) was an example of a piece of
writing based on something ordinary. Ordinary for me, I mean. That’s because, in the coastal area where I live,
pelicans are common. On most days, I see them sailing across the sky, large yet
graceful—masters of the wind. They glide with imperceptible adjustments of
their flight feathers; they’re the largest birds in the sky, larger even than
the sea eagles.
But when you see them close up on land, it’s another story. Their
largeness is accentuated. The Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus) is the largest of the world’s seven
species of pelican. Its plumage is undeniable handsome, a smart mix of black
and white, giving it the appearance of a bird dressed in the top half of a
tuxedo; yet it also looks ungainly and comical, and that—on land—is its
downfall. With its fat stomach and enormous pouched bill, it is extremely
difficult to take a pelican seriously. On the beach, people routinely laugh at
them. Pelicans don’t strut majestically (like herons do, for example); they
waddle. Their stomachs and bill seem to constantly get in the way. On land,
pelicans are more like clowns or buffoons.
Thus you have the two extremes of pelicans: the sheer enchantment of
their flight compared with what seems likes gross tomfoolery when they land.
For the poet, it’s inspiration served up fresh on a plate. It’s all there, just waiting to be written down.
But, of course, the poet has to notice it.
One day I noticed it enough to write the poem that became “The Pelican”.
Thus a bird which was an everyday sight, became something special to me in
words. I chose to write three stanzas about the pelican on land (the butt of
jokes, the misunderstood buffoon). But then I turned the poem and wrote a
fourth stanza about the pelican’s utter transformation in the sky. I had grown
to love the pelican over the years; that’s why I wanted to make the majesty of
its flight the climax of the poem. Its behaviour on land was no more than a
tongue-in-cheek joke in view of what the pelican routinely becomes when it
takes to the air.
The constant challenge for a poet is to notice things, and not just new things, but old, everyday things as well. I’m not any better at this than most people, I have to prod myself. I have to remind myself to purposefully see the things I look at every day. Even then, a poem has barely begun. I still have to allow the words to play in my head and become music (for that is what poetry is). But, in seeing, I have at least begun.
THE PELICAN
The pelican
struts, and he gawks at the air
with a bill
that’s too large for his head,and he gobbles and gulps, turning here and then there,
just as if he had never been fed.
Then he turns on a show for the people that come
(just to watch how he swallows his food)
and he waddles around till the people become
quite amused at his merry old mood.
How they laugh at this slow and preposterous bird
and they smile at his stomach so large,
then they say to themselves, “For a bird, he’s absurd,
with a belly as big as a barge!”
But then in a moment, the bird is all changed,
his wings are outstretched by his sides,
and up in the air he seems all rearranged
as he swiftly and gracefully glides.
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