there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
by Charles Bukowski
This poem came to me in one of those moments that stand out as transcendent. I was bumbling along in my day, and then out of nowhere there was a moment that seemed luminous and timeless, before the bumbling along resumed. Have you had any such moments?
In this case I was standing in a bookshop, listening to the poem being read to me by the shop keeper. We had been chatting about poetry and I’d asked him what his favourite poem of the moment was. Reading me Bluebird was his answer. I listened rapt, and heard the words in his voice, with his feeling coming through them. It brought tears to my eyes, for all the bluebirds within us all, usually hidden beneath the layers of toughness and self-protection. But paradoxically, in that moment, our two bluebirds were both ‘singing a little’ in the sharing of the poem and I knew we were both hearing them.
Moments like this are truly ‘poetic’. What I mean by this is that perhaps there is a poetry to life, if we have the presence to be there for it, the eyes to see it and the heart to appreciate it. Basho, the Japanese haiku poet said ‘Seen truly all things are poetic’. I wonder about seeing with poetic eyes, the eyes that don’t pass over life and instead fully receive the mystery, wonder and teaching in everything. And this may include all the feels – from the gritty realism of a city backstreet to the serenity of a moonrise, from cooking at home in the kitchen, to an overwhelmingly sacred moment like meeting your newborn.
Perhaps there is a great risk to living poetically – the same risk as the one that would allow the bluebird to be free and seen. It is undefended and this is scary, even terrifying. And yet it’s what we all long for. Let’s embrace this contradiction and start where we are – in loving the poetry of our defended selves, like Charles Bukowski does.
Ps. If you’d like to engage with poetry mindfully and experiment with living life poetically check out these two Mindfulness Meets Mystical Poetry opportunities: a online day retreat on 4th July and a 6 week evening course beginning in November.
Photo by Vijayalakshmi Nidugondi on Unsplash
