Poetry Friday: Golden-winged Warbler

It's early Friday afternoon in Uganda. It's a holiday here (Liberation Day), but I'm hard at work because we just got a new schedule and it's requiring a complete reworking of my thinking. I'm hoping to have a totally free Saturday as a result, though!

Recently the American Birding Association named its Bird of the Year.  Last year was the first time I was even aware that there was such a thing as the ABA Bird of the Year, and I posted about their choice for 2023, the Belted Kingfisher, here.  Liz Clayton Fuller, the illustrator who did the official painting of the bird used on the cover of the ABA magazine, chose to paint the female Belted Kingfisher and she called the result Queenfisher. 

 

The 2024 bird hasn't caught my imagination yet in quite the same way. It's one I haven't seen before (unlike the Belted Kingfisher). It's lovely, sure, but it has Near Threatened status, so I'm not terribly likely to see it. I may have to be contented just with knowing it exists. (See the photo from eBird, below.) It's the Golden-winged Warbler. (You can read about the bird and see this year's painting, which incorporates both of its habitats, here.)

(Source, eBird.com)

You can see from the photo and tell from the name that the golden color of this bird's wings and head is one of its most striking features. Thinking of gold made me remember how I always used to do a week of color poems with my seventh graders in Haiti, using the classic book Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Poetry and Color, by Mary O'Neill. This would always inspire a spate of color poems from my students. I'd start with purple and gold, our school colors. 

 

 

I got this photo of Mary O'Neill's gold poem from Amazon. My favorite lines are on the next page, which isn't pictured, and I don't have a copy of the book here with me in Uganda. But here's the rest of the poem:

 

Gold is the color of
Clover honey
Gold is a certain
Kind of money.
Gold is alive
In a flickering fish
That lives its life
In a crystal dish.
Gold is the answer
To many a wish.
Gold is feeling
Like a king
It’s like having the most
Of everything –
Long time ago
I was told
Yellow’s mother’s name
Is gold…

Mary O’Neill
(from Hailstones and Halibut Bones)

(My favorite lines are the ones about the "flickering fish.")

 

 

I'm so thankful to live in a world full of color! (Or colour, as we spell it here in Uganda, with its British-influenced style of English.) Although I won't see any Golden-winged Warblers here, I do often see another brightly colored bird, and you can see my Birdtober poem about Ross's Turaco here, along with glorious photos (obviously, not taken by me). 

You can see today's Poetry Friday roundup here, along with a great piñata poem and some wonderful piñata stamps. Thanks for hosting, Susan!