.

Flamingo

The S-curve of that sinuous neck,
The stern black tip of that great bill,
The blue eye with which we must reck-
on like a gaudy monarch’s will.

Not Disney’s giddy croquet bird,
The one which lolls while Alice tries
To make it mind—a bird absurd
Under the Red Queen’s baleful eyes.

Rather a bird which, in a flock,
Enlivens hot savannah scenes,
A hot-pink, cotton candy frock
Which settles down on blues and greens.

One leg now tucked, sequestered gaze,
A bird to garner viewers’ praise.

.

.

Jeremiah Johnson got his MA in Rhetoric in 2003 and then ran off to China to teach for a decade.  His work has appeared in the Sequoyah and Ekphrastic Reviews.  He is also currently a teacher of English Composition and World Literature at the University of North Georgia.  He lives in Cumming, GA.

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23 Responses

  1. jd

    Love this beautiful “painting” of the Flamingo especially since they are much on my mind lately. I have a prolific Cyclamen whose waiting buds with their “sinuous” necks remind me of your subject. No blue eyes though. Thank you for a perfect poem to begin the day.

    Reply
    • Jeremiah Johnson

      Glad you enjoyed the poem! I Google image’d Cyclamens. That’s a pretty flower – maybe I’ll try to introduce a few to my own yard 🙂

      Reply
  2. Bruce Phenix

    Jeremiah, Thank you for this skilful and pleasing sonnet ‘reclaiming’ the flamingo. I like your alliteration, the playful splitting of ‘reck-on’, the repetition of ‘bird’ before its rhyming word ‘absurd’ and your evocative descriptive details including a range of colour words.

    Reply
    • Jeremiah Johnson

      Thanks Bruce! I feel like that painting kind of reclaimed the image of silliness I’ve always had in the back of my own mind after watching Walt’s lampoon as a kid.

      I wondered as I wrote the sonnet if I was relying to heavily on the word “bird” – but it just felt like the most obvious choice 🙂

      Reply
  4. Brian A. Yapko

    An absolute charmer, Jeremiah. Flamingos are one of my favorite birds and I see them with some regularity in Florida. Do they appear as far north as Georgia? You capture their grave whimsy. And our minds must be in synch — my own take on flamingos is coming up in a few days albeit with a somewhat different focus. This must be flamingo season!

    Reply
    • Jeremiah Johnson

      Thanks Brian –

      “a time and a season for everything under the sun” – right?

      No, I don’t THINK they make it to Georgia. But I’m looking forward to your address on the subject!

      Reply
  5. Shamik Banerjee

    Excellent word-painting, Jeremiah! I’ve never seen these birds live, but your poem was intricate enough to help me picture the scenes in my mind. I especially like this line:
    A hot-pink, cotton candy frock
    which settles down on blues and greens.

    Thank you for your lovely craft!

    Reply
    • Jeremiah Johnson

      Hi Shamik,

      Those two lines were a response to a critique from members of a monthly poets group I attend that the third quatrain was too stuffy and serious for the rest of the poem. Glad you liked the revision!

      Reply
  6. Isabella

    I thoroughly enjoyed your majestic descriptions of the Flamingo! Beautifully colourful. Thank you for wonderful poem.

    Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    The commenters above have said “word-painting” and “visually appealing” and “evocative descriptive words.” That’s the key here — this is a poetic snapshot, free from anything other than the pure beauty of the flamingo captured in language. It is sheer linguistic pleasure, without needing any external justification.

    Reply
    • Jeremiah Johnson

      Hi Joseph – Glad you enjoyed it!

      If there’s any depth to the poem, it’s in what Heald’s painting did for me, recapturing my sense of the majesty of God’s creation where old Walt had kind of skewed my perspective as a kid. And, of course, once the painting had done that for me, what came out was simply “linguistic pleasure”! Thanks for that phrase 🙂

      Reply
  8. Paul A. Freeman

    Flamingoes are indeed amazing-looking birds.

    Thanks for this rhymed and reasoned examination of them, Jeremiah.

    Reply
  9. Stephen M. Dickey

    Reclaim indeed, thanks for helping me to dissociate these beautiful birds from a disgusting movie I was somehow conned into seeing in the 80’s.
    By the by, I find myself tempted to have occasionally a “run-on” rhyme like you did with“reckon”. I wonder whether it’s “allowed” to just have the whole word in one line and the extra syllable could for the following line.

    Reply
    • Jeremiah Johnson

      Whenever I pull the run-on rhyme with my “non-traditional” friends they groan and tell me to get with the times – so I’ve learned to just follow your suggestion there. I didn’t know if that was kosher on this site, but I’ll try in in the future!

      Reply
      • Stephen M. Dickey

        Jeremiah, I wasn’t trying to persuade, it’s just something I’ve been wondering about. The way you did it avoids possible confusion about the meter,

  10. Margaret Coats

    In this simple descriptive poem, associated images stand out. The first is the bird’s blue eye, contrasted with the Red Queen’s baleful eyes, and coming back with the sequestered gaze at the end. The other is the nicely rhyming comparison of flock and frock. A feature like that rarely works so well, but a flock of flamingos settling together into blue-green shallows really does look like a hot party dress descending into cool colors. Good job, Jeremiah.

    Reply
  11. Jeremiah Johnson

    Thanks Margaret, I hadn’t really thought about the contrast between the eyes, but now that you mention it! Glad you liked that pink frock, too. Regards.

    Reply

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