i dont under stand the meaning of the poem "A shadow of a nest"
sorry that i cant post for i am unable to some one help me i would really appreciate it

I assume it's this one. [www.loc.gov]

As far as I can see, he's watching a film of a human cannon ball act at a circus and thinking of the birds nesting near his house. He's comparing the wait for the cannon to be fired with waiting very quietly (pretending to be only a shadow) to see the mother bird feed her chicks.

Now you just have to produce all the posh poetry language Les and Hugh can do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2006 01:03PM by Linda.

Dude's got some credentials, that's fer sure:

[www.middlebury.edu]

Copied below without permission, but we are sure to be forgiven, since it is done so merely for academic purposes.

I find it difficult to read, what with the long lines and endjambments. Why end a stanza with 'into the canvas', then start the next stanza with the finish of that same line/thought, for example. Then, I stumble when I see the word 'air' and later 'pair' ending the following line. Makes me think there is a secret rhyme scheme I am to discover. Looking around, I don't see the pattern repeated enough to be compelling, so I have to start reading the poem all over again.

I thought Margolis might have intended blank verse, but counting the syllables throws that supposition off as well. The long sentences are hard to read out loud, since not enough punctuation has been included for the reader to pause for breath.

Technical issues aside then, I am thinking the poem is intended to compare the launching of baby birds to that of the human cannon ball. Since we have a pair of (what I believe to be) Say's Phoebes (flycatchers) that raise a new family every year while nesting on top of one of the pillars on our doorstep, I can visualize such an event.


The Human Cannon Ball climbs down into
the barrel of the cannon, safe in the tube’s
darkness, waiting, like me, for the film to punch
him up the metal shaft and into the canvas

air, down-tent, to the inflated landing bag.
I’m holding my breath because a pair
of purple finches have nested in the exploding
fuschia next to the door and are gun-shy

when anyone comes or goes, so their young
are fed more on my family’s comings and
goings than their own hunger. Mother
flits from the willow to the box elder,

waiting for evening, for a lull long enough
to poke a seed into a new throat. So I
ask everyone to use the back door which is
easy to forget to do and not to scent the nest

with our kind, out of curiosity or the wish
to kiss a berry into one of the four blind
gaping mouths. Father, rosy and raspberry,
not purple, stays on a near branch, as if

standing on a spring, waiting to see if I will
have the courage to breathe, when the Human
Cannon Ball is launched into the air
and turns himself like a maple leaf, a snow

goose feathering into a corn field, toward
the arms of the audience, which can never
take the place of the pink blown-up plastic
bag that will save him a few frames and words

from now – if I can stand here, still as a shadow
of a nest, breathing like the wind that flies
through the weedy branches of the box elder,
here, empty as the air that needs to take him up.



From Fire in the Orchard
Autumn House Press

Copyright Gary Margolis.