{"id":379617,"date":"2022-11-15T06:06:24","date_gmt":"2022-11-14T20:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=379617"},"modified":"2022-11-15T06:06:24","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T20:06:24","slug":"chunge-sonnet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/chunge-sonnet\/","title":{"rendered":"Chung\u00e9* Sonnet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cThen all the nations of birds lifted together the huge net of the shadows of this earth in multitudinous dialects, twittering tongues\u2026\u201d <\/em><br \/>\n\u2014Derek Walcott, (b.1930 &#8211; d.2017) born and died on the island of Saint Lucia in the\u00a0Caribbean sea. He won the1992 Nobel Prize in Literature.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>Chung\u00e9\u2019s Continuous Celestial Circus<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nAs they turn and tumble in a bright blue sky<br \/>\noblivious to people and predators below<br \/>\nflying in tandem above aloof apart from gravity<br \/>\nwith minimal effect on their acrobatic flow<br \/>\nin and out of sight swooping sideways and soaring<br \/>\nrocking and reeling with and against the wind<br \/>\ntheir gentle gymnastic gyrations never boring<br \/>\nlike paper kites their wings don\u2019t seem to bend<br \/>\naerial jigs and reels from these pure white birds<br \/>\nas twilight beckons them all back to their nest<br \/>\ntheir silent graceful flight needs elegant words<br \/>\nup there in celestial comfort parading their best<br \/>\nin the jungle below hiding in a wild papaya patch<br \/>\nferal cats wait for the chung\u00e9 bird\u2019s eggs to hatch.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\n<strong>A Reef Remembers and Retains<\/strong><br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nThe reef remembers almost everything<br \/>\nand some time for many years it retains<br \/>\nplastic, trash, shells where barnacles cling<br \/>\nmuddy discharge for days after heavy rains<br \/>\nchung\u00e9 birds fly in pair formation offshore<br \/>\nwheeling in tandem on invisible trapeze<br \/>\nthese graceful acrobats know what air is for<br \/>\nthey cavort and catapult capriciously with ease<br \/>\nthe heavy thud of waves outside on the reef<br \/>\nare reminders of the typhoon that just passed<br \/>\nfor many days moving acting the sand thief<br \/>\nno one knows how long rough waves will last<br \/>\nclean beaches inside the reef took a beating<br \/>\nlong-time remembrances are now seeding.<\/p>\n<p><em>*Chung\u00e9 are a common white tern in the CNMI.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Joey &#8216;Pepe Batbon&#8217; Connolly (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Joey aka Pepe Batbon is a retired educator who taught in the CNMI, NOLA, and LVNV. He is a sonnet practitioner who enjoys stargazing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThen all the nations of birds lifted together the huge net of the shadows of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":355846,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[26,23672,23673,13843],"class_list":["post-379617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-cnmi","tag-lvnv","tag-nola","tag-pepe-batbon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}