nouvelle vague

Songbird,

Press your feet into the tree's bark

when you are scared.

The bark is warm, it is 

worn, it is

yours. 

 

Yet morning comes.

Is the branch now too narrow

to bear your weight?

Then go up through the green-blooded forest

dappled in balmy sunlight—

Your outstretched wings,

quills against a boundless blue canvas. 

 

Songbird,

Above the ocean's shore you will see:

The ocean's waves timidly fold back into themselves

again and again—

A comfortable pattern.

Still, beneath their calm, a

swelling new wave gathers.  

 

Songbird,

Stillness may curl around your mouth

rich and nourishing as ripe fruit—

Savor it too long and its sweetness may

turn sour.

 

But songbird,

I cannot tell you 

whether to swallow

or to fly.

This poem was very much inspired by the concept of "nouvelle vague," or the French New Wave, which was a revolutionary 1950s film movement where filmmakers challenged norms of traditional filmmaking and editing. Filmmakers in this movement brought a wave of improvisation and new techniques to narrative-telling and editing that embraced a more raw, spontaneous style, a rejection of the otherwise rigid structure found in the studio filmmaking process. However, as with any revolutionary movement, nouvelle vague came with its own uncertainty. After all, the movement emerged from filmmakers who understood and heavily appreciated traditional cinema before challenging it. In this sense, my poem aims to live between the two: flight (ambition, change) or staying (comfort, stillness). 

By addressing the songbird directly with "you", I hoped the speaker would talk and counsel the reader/humans through navigating such uncertainty, too. The songbird's branch in which it perches is warm and deserved, and there is beauty in such safety, beauty in it being worn out. At the same time, the ocean’s waves following their timid, "comfortable pattern" brings a new light to safety: it can encourage stagnancy, an acceptance of rigid norms without ever challenging them. The fruit image also aims to complicate this. Sweetness is inherently delightful and "nourishing", and savoring is almost innately human. But it is only when grasped/consumed for too long that it becomes "sour" in taste, no longer serving its original purpose. Finally, my poem ends by refusing to resolve such a choice for the songbird. This ending was deliberate for two reasons: (1) it suggests it’s up to individuals themselves to come to such a decision, not the influence of others (2) it also recognizes that both growth and stillness carry significance. It is not a black and white situation, and perhaps it never will be.

now listening: "nouvelle vague" by wave to earth