Performing Art Poem by Michael Burch

Performing Art
by Michael R. Burch

after Percy Bysshe Shelley

Who teaches the wren
in its drab existence
to explode into song?

What parodies of irony
does the jay espouse
with its sharp-edged tongue?

What instinctual memories
lend stunning brightness
to the strange dreams

of the dull gray slug
—spinning its chrysalis,
gluing rough seams—

abiding in darkness
its transformation,
till, waving damp wings,

it applauds its performance?
I am done with irony.
Life itself sings.

One suspects the typical American poetry professor and/or workshop instructor would advise birds to give up singing for mostly inaudible expressions of jaded irony. Keywords/Tags: performing, art, poetry, poets, poetic expression, song, songs, singing, music, irony, cynicism, parodies, dreams, imagination, chrysalis, butterfly, transformation, natural, performance