Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.
This poem is called 'Paired Things' and it really is just stopping for a minute to think about how strange that things are connected and not only in the outside world but in ourselves. And how they can shift from one elevation to another.
Paired Things
Who, who had only seen wings,
could extrapolate the
skinny sticks of things
birds use for land,
the backward way they bend,
the silly way they stand?
And who, only studying
birdtracks in the sand,
could think those little forks
had decamped on the wind?
So many paired things seem odd.
Who ever would have dreamed
the broad winged raven of despair
would quit the air and go
bandylegged upon the ground,
a common crow?
from Flamingo Watching: Poems (Copper Beech Press, 1994), © Kay Ryan 1994, used by permission of the author and the publisher, copperbeechpress.com. Poetry Foundation recording made on 11 Sept 2007, San Francisco, California.