Bloggish Serendipity

My blog takes its name from New Zealand slang for "happy, joyous", as in "Happy as a box of birds". It's fun to say, and seemed appropriate considering my fascination with birds. Today, I happened across this:

"life is a box
filled with songs, the box opens
and a flock
of birds
flies out
and wants to tell me something"

--Pablo Neruda, The Invisible Man

This is from the first of a series of Neruda's "elemental odes", of which he said, "This is how I published a long history of time, things, artisans, people, fruit, flowers, and life." Some of the odes were published in a Venezualan newspaper; Neruda agreed to contribute poems on the condition that they would appear, not in the literary supplement, but in the news section. Which I find appealing.