Blue Bird Poem by Jim Boone

Perched on the old oak tree
Blown out of the sky
By hurricane force winds
Surrounded by dazed songbirds
Listening to a mockingbird’s trill

“Hear that wind? Feel how it blew?
No birds of the air were safer
Than the animals on the ground
Or the people hunkered down”

The angry ocean slappin’ all around
Just because it could flex its
Father nature muscles against the
Mother nature tranquility of the
Status quo: Yo, ho, ho –
Lookout people! Right now! !
Big IKE’s gonna’ surge!

That blue bird appeared each day
After the storm had passed
Looking over the mountain of debris
Drawing our focus upward and out
Reminding us that we are in Galveston
Not destructible and on a pile of waste
But resilient as that blue bird
And still a soul and spirit that can fly...

Blue bird perched in a Magnolia tree
Listening to a revival of islander joy-in-life
The music of our voices beyond anniversary.

10/13/2009