bird Archives

wild fools

beyond the towers where the guards stand waiting

Oh, you are a writer? Give us a hero story, then! We’ll get the popcorn, let’s go.

I am not very interested in the hero story.

Tell us about the dragon! How it was slain and everything is safe again!
I cannot. I have no faith in the premise.

I have always loved dragons. Imagined ones, metaphorical ones. Besides, I tend to talk to lizards when I walk.

I tire of the way the story must always be about the hero, or those waiting for the hero, or those tending the hero, or those preparing the world for the hero’s return. I want to know who kept the living going while all these heroes were off on their quests. I would like to hear the lizard tell what happened.

It is curious how often the dragon dies only for its guarded fortune to change hands. The gold. The virgins. Another castle.

I have become suspicious of people who can state what they are about. Perhaps this is required now. A mission statement. A brand. A clean line of purpose. Meanwhile the shadow goes about its work.

I know only that my blind spots arrive in multitudes. So, I keep watch instead. I make little shelters. It’s much more bird feeder than monument.

Hi, birds.

There you are.

Take what you need.

I have no illusion that I am feeding you.

You are feeding me.

Language feels this way, too. I’m not climbing Jacob’s ladder or pulling a sword from a stone. I am near a hearth, tending a loaf. I keep making the same loaf, because wherever I am, there are always hungry mouths. Take what you need.

Hi, birds. There you are again. Beyond the towers, where the guards are waiting, the gardens have begun again without the hero. Come eat.

to bird us

some return in music

Where once music, now noise. I mean to sing against the roar of it, to find the others to recover a refrain from memory. To call and call in aria, unceasing, I do––but for today, only shelter. Only weep.

mother to feather

a music lesson

little bird wait
as long as you need
to offer
your opening notes
and when you hear them
come true, sing
as loud as you
can

count them

with bird

What after that wind flies? There goes one harpy. Now another. Repeat. They fall back later, to resume the docile pose of downy chicks in hand, two at a time.

After, one wonders. What this means if you consider the ratio of handheld bird to idea of those remaining in the bush? Look around then, sense a feather of presence. But now is one of those times when counting will not hold so maybe later but who knows. Was now always so hard to number–– or ever?

o bird
o feather
o breath
o time

hold me like the one about to fly
like found feather after bird gone
like opening notes of song almost
remembered.

long wave

before wintering

when i knew time like bird & myself
as blading grass but without a word
for the wide green weft of my sun catching
in full sway before i thought to ask what
after sun gone i would make

grails

amid ongoing hush

we shared real questions in imagined time
meaning everything we made there was
unfinished & blood is no fiction it learns
drop by unsparing bird through intractable
dawns singing feathers shrunk to fit tongues
to then expand to swallow us whole into
carrying we carry on like this & sing

chattering

chill

Go forth, love,
follow the bird
that flies from
you into night
so dark it trains
the eyes to watch
for what shimmers
over dirt under rain.

feather

of lead

Bird, sing into this place for the weight of what remains, for I mean to shelter what may not be saved.

where will

how, singing?

Hello, bird. Without your forest, you sing a loop from a wire. From where I stand, your presence is a nagging question. Where to live now. How?

Transience

After space

First was displacement across a hollowing, echoing earth. Then came the longing of the rest of us, still here. The ache to know a place. Meanwhile, we remain tethered to one or another edge but mostly floating, trying to listen to the remaining birds. Who seem sometimes to suggest a song to somewhere.