"The Poets' Birthday" by The Tuesday Poets 2012

Just because it is worth repeating:

The shyest sparrow's supplications in the early evening trees

are a careful arpeggio - each note liberates a flotilla of leaves
fleeting, indeed, left scattered as archipelago in a dew-grass sea.  

The song's begun: feathered entreaties lift from every hedgerow, every

field, join in one great arc of beak and wing and downy plume --

brief benediction for the worker trudging home, a heart-lifted pause

at day's end. Summer's pages fall. Leaf by leaf, they shorten days,

strip bare the trunks, spill forth a concertina of split, sagging plums,

crimson globes -- Demeter's heart strung low against the blue note 

sky. Furrowed fields lie flat beneath the tramp of corn-fed feet.

The scene is set, two candles lit, another year opens a window 

through which we pass in streak of silver, burst of wheels' screech, breath

of horns' bright blasting. Inside, the chink of glass against china,

bubble of laughter tossed from one guest to the next draws us

to warmth, the blissful promise of shared experience. How it swells

the soul's bright plumage! A winking flame copies itself on the clean

slope of the knife before it passes. The reflection flickers: and beyond 

the window frame, a final guest hesitates in mauve-hued shadow, ghost 

of Keats maybe, listening still, reticent, reluctant to eschew 

autumn's arias. And hear now, along the bay, 

the pulse of song ticks out again in joyous iteration, a boy kicks 

a ball against a wall, a sole finch adds bebop syncopation. Gabble, 

and its consistency of warm honey dampen the tenor, the tune -- best

left out in the tang of sharpened daylight. Shadows unwilling to retreat

stand shoulder-to-shoulder and beat the day's thrum chanting come, cold,

come, dark, come firelight, we too have our part. Gladly, watch effulgence fade,

into this gentler glow of murmured crackle and spark-fed thoughts. Each year

is gathered and falls away in a clap of digits, up from nothing to where

we find ourselves surrounded. It's come to this: the riffle of breath, the winking

flame. One is out, then the other. Stay with us, poets, it's time to start over.  

A global birthday poem written line by line by 26 poets from six countries and 12 cities over two weeks: from Tuesday April 3 to April 17 2012. It has been written to celebrate our second birthday. 

The Tuesday Poets are (in order of their lines): Melissa Green, Claire Beynon, Saradha Koirala, Janis Freegard, T. Clear, Catherine Bateson, Renee Liang, Elizabeth Welsh, Alicia Ponder, Tim Jones, Kathleen Jones, Helen McKinlay, Helen Lowe, Eileen Moeller, Orchid Tierney, Susan T. Landry, Keith Westwater, Belinda Hollyer, Harvey Molloy, Bernadette Keating, Andrew M. Bell, Michelle Elvy, Catherine Fitchett, P.S. Cottier, Helen Rickerby, Mary McCallum.

Unable to post this year: Sarah Jane Barnett, Robert Sullivan, Zireaux, Emma McCleary 

                                            Editor: Mary McCallum, TP co-curator