Love of numbers is common in childhood -- and traditional nursery rhymes offer chances to know numbers as playmates and friends. "Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie . . . The king was in his counting house . . ." and so on. In "The Story of the Ten Blackbirds" poet Millicent Accardi combines a portrait of an amazing story-telling aunt with a collage of childhood memories, counted and remembered.
The Story of the Ten Blackbirds by Millicent Borges Accardi
Blended at times into
The three little pigs
Or the Catholic Saints.
Aunt Flossie ripped
Pieces of newspaper
Or envelopes into ten
Roundish pieces
Three of her fingers were lost
Partially in an accident
To the cotton mills of
French Canada when she
Was a child
The index, cut at the nail
The thumb in half,
And her first lost at the joint.
She licked each piece
Of paper and attached
Them dampened to
The whole and the partial
Digits. This little blackbird
She said, went to market
As she whirled her hands
In the air then quickly behind
Her back. Miraculously one
Blackbird vanished
This little bird was fat
And forgot to pray to St Anthony
Her hands shook and
Another flew away
On and on it went as I watched
Rapt, kneeling at her feet
Holding onto her legs, astonished
At her magic tricks. Horrified
By her fingers. With a whirl of her
Tongue and a great fluttering
All ten blackbirds returned
Home to all ten fingers that
Auntie Flossie held up for me
To inspect, the sweaty bits of paper.
Accardi's poem appears in her collection Injuring Eternity (Mischevious Muse Press, 2010). Previous blog postings that also feature ideas from childhood rhymes include: 30 November 2011, 15 August 2011, 16 May 2011, 24 February 2011.
Children have such different reactions to disfigurement than adults -- curiosity, fear, acceptance. I really like the way you weave fascination and fright into a poem that is ultimately to me about the unconditional love we feel for our elders. So much trust lies in their hands and we as children take the journeys they call us to.
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