Bird in the Classroom by Colin Thiele

This is a poem we looked at this week and here are birds that visited us this week





The students drowsed and drowned

in the Teacher's ponderous monotone -
limp bodies loping in the wordy heat,
melted and run together, desk and flesh as one.
swooning and swimming in a sea of drone.
 

Each one asleep, swayed and vaguely drifted

with lidded eyes and lolling weighted heads,
were caught on heavy waves and dimly lifted,
sunk slowly, ears ringing in the syrup of his sound,

or borne from the room on a heaving wilderness of beds.
And then on a sudden, a bird's cool voice
punched out song. Crisp and spare
on the startled air,

beak-beamed
or idly tossed,
each note gleamed
like a bead of frost.

A bird's cool voice from a neighbour's tree
with five clear calls -  mere grains of sound
rare and neat
repeated twice
but they sprang from the heat
like drops of ice.

Ears cocked, before the comment ran
fading and chuckling where a wattle stirred,

 

 

 

 

 

the students wondered how they could have heard
such dreary monotone from a man, and
such wisdom from a bird















 

 

 

Colin Thiele was born in Eudunda, a small town north of the Barossa Valley in South Australia.He attended local schools here and then graduated from the University of Adelaide, later serving in the Royal Australian Air Force during the Second World War, and then became a high school teacher, college lecturer, principal and director.
 


He wrote a novel when 11 years old (and, it is said he later burnt it). He had a love of interesting words and unusual language, perhaps because he was a bi-lingual child. One of his first early favourites was 'While the Billy Boils' by Henry Lawson.