Hello, everyone! Welcome to the last edition of Tuesday Poetics before we go on break for the holidays!🌲 Melissa here, from Mom With a Blog. When you think of December weather and the holidays this time of year, what animals come to mind? Many have been assigned to this season, whether rightfully so, or not. Here are a few:

Although assigned to it, penguins don’t really have anything to do with Christmas anywhere. They have become associated with it because of their (mostly) cold habitat, and they can be seen donning red Christmas hats and adorning Christmas cards and the like. There are eighteen species of penguins in the world, including Galapagos penguins, which are the only penguins found north of the equator, on remote volcanic islands.

“Magellanic Penguin” by Pablo Neruda

Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.

I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings
but hard little oars
on its sides:
it was as old as the salt;
the age of moving water,
and it looked at me from its age:
since then I know I do not exist;
I am a worm in the sand.

the reasons for my respect
remained in the sand:
the religious bird
did not need to fly,
did not need to sing,
and through its form was visible
its wild soul bled salt:
as if a vein from the bitter sea
had been broken.

Penguin, static traveler,
deliberate priest of the cold,
I salute your vertical salt
and envy your plumed pride.

Partridges are medium sized birds, bigger than quails and smaller than pheasants. They are native to Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Partridges can be found in a variety of different habitats including forests, grasslands, and plains. You won’t, however, find them in a pear tree, as in the popular “Twelve Days of Christmas” song. Natural historian Stephen Moss believes there might not have been a pear tree to begin with, that the song originally mentioned ‘a partridge and a perdrix’, the former referring to the English partridge and the latter to the red-legged, or French one. According to National Geographic, there are 56 different species of partridge.

“The Partridge” by David Galler

Excessive coition
Marks off the males;
Their acquisition
Of mates entails
Fierce competition

Which so depletes
That often the loser
To sex submits
And conqueror
Accommodates.

It was believed
Desire tormented
Females—relieved
By the winds that vented
Male odors believed

To make them pregnant.
Toward his brood
The male is malignant,
Finding its crude
Fawning repugnant;

Soon after birth,
Their mother conceals
The young. Their worth,
Even in shells,
Was such that earth

Or procryptic crust
Was of no avail
Against the lust
Of a childless female
Scouring the dust.

What kind of note
Recalls the snatched
To their nest but
To be redispatched?…
It seems by rote

Partridges all—
At the very first
Tremor of footfall—
Covered with dirt
As for burial

Freeze on their backs.
Well aware
Of his virtue and lack—
The cunning desire
To live on the rack

Of perversity—
Man, first and last,
For his bride-to-be
This bird once cast…
In a pear tree.

(from Poetry Magazine, June 1966)

So, what do kangaroos have to do with Christmas? Or winter holidays? Here in the United States, nothing. In Australia, however, there are tales of kangaroos leading Santa’s sleigh. There is a Christmas carol about them (see below). As the story goes, because Christmas fell in the summer in Australia, the weather was too hot for the reindeer. Santa subbed them out for kangaroos! You might even catch Santa on a surf board.

“Six White Boomers” Song Lyrics by Rolf Harris

Early on one Christmas Day, a Joey Kanga-roo,
Was far from home and lost in a great big zoo.
Mummy, where’s my mummy? They’ve taken her a-way.
We’ll help you find your mummy, son. Hop up on the sleigh.

Up beside the bag of toys little Joey hopped,
But they hadn’t gone far when Santa stopped.
Unharnessed all the reindeer and Joey wondered why,
Then he heard a far off booming in the sky.

View full lyrics here.

“The Duck and the Kangaroo” by Edward Lear

I
 
Said the Duck to the Kangaroo,
    ‘Good gracious! how you hop!
Over the fields and the water too,
    As if you never would stop!
My life is a bore in this nasty pond,
And I long to go out in the world beyond!
    I wish I could hop like you!’
    Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.
 
 
II
 
‘Please give me a ride on your back!’
    Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.
‘I would sit quite still, and say nothing but “Quack,”
    The whole of the long day through!
And we’d go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee,
Over the land, and over the sea;—
    Please take me a ride! O do!’
    Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.
 
 
III
 
Said the Kangaroo to the Duck,
    ‘This requires some little reflection;
Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck,
    And there seems but one objection,
Which is, if you’ll let me speak so bold,
Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold,
And would probably give me the roo-
    Matiz!’ said the Kangaroo.
 
  IV
 
Said the Duck, ‘As I sate on the rocks,
    I have thought over that completely,
And I bought four pairs of worsted socks
    Which fit my web-feet neatly.
And to keep out the cold I’ve bought a cloak,
And every day a cigar I’ll smoke,
    All to follow my own dear true
    Love of a Kangaroo!’
 
 
V

Said the Kangaroo, ‘I’m ready!
    All in the moonlight pale;
But to balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady!
    And quite at the end of my tail!’
So away they went with a hop and a bound,
And they hopped the whole world three times round;
    And who so happy,—O who,
    As the Duck and the Kangaroo?.

The Eurasian wren is one of the smallest birds in Europe. However, it is known as “king of birds”. In Great Britain and Ireland on St. Stephen’s Day (the day after Christmas), it was tradition to hunt and kill wrens. Or, in some versions of the ritual, the birds were killed on Christmas Day and buried in tiny coffins. This was followed by a procession through town, where bachelors called “wren boys” visited each house asking for food and gifts. There are numerous tales about the tradition’s origin. One of the most wide-spread throughout Europe is The Election of the Bird-King, first mentioned in Aesop’s fables. In this story, the birds compete for the title of king by seeing who can fly highest and farthest. All the different kinds of birds take flight, and, one by one, each drops out of the race. The eagle is last in flight, and ready to land, when out from under his wing emerges the wren, who flies farther. And so he is king. Hunting the wren is thought to ensure fertility and prosperity for the coming year. Wrens are also associated with Yule.

“This Heart That Flutters Near My Heart” by James Joyce

This heart that flutters near my heart
My hope and all my riches is,
Unhappy when we draw apart
And happy between kiss and kiss:
My hope and all my riches — - yes! — -
And all my happiness.

For there, as in some mossy nest
The wrens will divers treasures keep,
I laid those treasures I possessed
Ere that mine eyes had learned to weep.
Shall we not be as wise as they
Though love live but a day?

“Baby Wrens’ Voices” by Thomas R. Smith

I am a student of wrens.
When the mother bird returns
to her brood, beak squirming
with winged breakfast, a shrill
clamor rises like jingling
from tiny, high-pitched bells.
Who’d have guessed such a small
house contained so many voices?
The sound they make is the pure sound
of life’s hunger. Who hangs our house
in the world’s branches, and listens
when we sing from our hunger?
Because I love best those songs
that shake the house of the singer,
I am a student of wrens.

Originally appeared in KINNICKINNIC by Thomas R. Smith, Parallel Press, Madison, WI, 2008.  Used with permission.

Now that you have perhaps learned something new about one (or more) of these miracles of nature, I’d like you to consider your poetic prompt for today. Choose one of the following two options:

• Select one of the above traditional characters and write a poem from the (first person) point of view of said bird or marsupial. Imagine you are one of these. What is it like where you live this time of year? How does Christmas factor in to your life, or how do you factor into Christmas? Perhaps you object to being associated with a holiday, or have just learned of the association and are filled with incredulity. Whatever you celebrate, or if you don’t celebrate, feel free to write about anything, incorporating the creature’s point of view.
• Select one of the above and write a poem from the third person point of view, describing how a poem might talk with or interact with said bird or marsupial. What tone does the poem take? Is the poem skeptical about why a kangaroo is associated with Christmas? Is the poem concerned for the animal’s welfare in the current climate crisis? Does the poem attempt to convince the wren to revolt against the very ones who so wrongly incorporated it into the holiday season? Again, feel free to write about anything, using the dialogue between poem and creature.

Here are some poems (including a couple I’ve written) you might reference as examples of the second option: “Better late than never,”; “I Said to Poetry”; “That’s odd,”; “The Poem Said”. Feel free to use these or any of the poems showcased in this post as inspiration!

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• Write a poem in response to the prompt.
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• Have a wonderful time!🎉