Five Flights Up

“Five Flights Up” is a narrative poem and a lyric. The work meets the criteria for a narrative poem because it tells a story. The story isn’t action-packed, but there’s still a plot with characters and events. There’s a barking dog and a quivering bird, and there’s action as night becomes morning and the dog’s owner yells at him. Additionally, the poem fits into the lyric category since it’s short and documents a personal moment witnessed by the speaker. Even though the speaker is overwhelmingly objective and distant, the poem remains a product of scenes they observed from, as the title suggests, “five flights up” in their home.

The speaker’s tone is specific. It’s “[s]till dark,” says the speaker in Line 1, so the poem begins at a specific time of day: Night. The speaker, who also serves as the narrator, then introduces the first character—the “unknown bird” who “sits on his usual branch” (Line 2). The tone remains specific. The speaker explains that they don’t know this bird—it’s not a pet or a creature they’ve taken the time to name. Yet they’re not unfamiliar with the bird since they know it’s on “his usual branch” (Line 2).