The Bluebird

A winged bit of Indian sky
Strayed hither from its home on high.

This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on November 12, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“The Bluebird” first appeared in Song of the Oktahutche: Collected Poems (University of Nebraska Press, 2008), a comprehensive anthology of the poetry of Alexander Posey. Unpublished at the time of Posey’s death, the poem was discovered in a manuscript collection of his work housed at the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In the introduction to the anthology, Matthew Wynn Sivils, Dean’s Professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University, writes, “[Alexander Posey’s] nature poems―especially those devoted to birds and the ubiquitous Oktahutche―repeatedly manage to call forth inventive lines and singing language that collectively represent a love letter written to the natural world as one would find it within the Muscogee nation. For example, Posey’s very brief poem ‘The Bluebird’ works precisely because of its brevity: its straightforward yet striking image and simple delivery portray an Indian Territory sky found only in Posey’s literary world. [. . .] The best of Posey’s nature poetry becomes a sort of Indian Territory pastoral that ranks with the best verse of that time.”