-by Skorda
Let me tell you, this was one smart bird
I think I fell in love
Not with his soft gray feathers, his red tipped tail
The way he cocked his little head before speaking
These were sweet, but shared amongst his kind.
What I loved was his alone -don’t laugh
I loved his bird brain.
This bird had skills.
Not for him the vulgar macaw pirate talk
Asking for a cracker, shocking old ladies
This bird was savvy to this modern world
He knew its ways, its sounds, the words.
This bird loved beauty.
He taught himself the gentle whistles and deep throated growls of the laborer
And from his perch
He watched the passing girls respond to his soft sounds,
They touch their hair,
They thrust their shoulders back a bit
to be more beautiful for him
And how this bird could laugh,
His special skill the cell phone ring
He must have known a hundred or a thousand, every phone in Europe, ringing in the crowded café
Fooled again
And on that blazing hot summer’s day
As we sat in the shade of a plane tree
Sipping ouzo, lazily watching lizards
Sun themselves on the ruined rock of Mystras
I had the need to see this bird, just one more time, oh please
On the other side of the mountains. Let’s go.
Racing daylight across the Taygetos,
white knuckled through Langada Pass,
Kalamata a blur.
And then the sun was setting over Sfahtiria
wrought iron mermaids glowing in the fading light of Pylos, his home.
I don’t want to tell you this part.
How, heart pounding I dashed through the lobby of the small hotel, eerily silent.
sensing the worst-knowing it-I approached his perch,
And there he was, beautiful still
without life or breath
His bird brain stilled
Preserved forever under glass
One more bit of Greek history
left to imagination
Skopelos and Virgin
-by Skorda
when first you see it
across the water,
rising round and new above the mountain.
Open your mouth and swallow
while youth holds its roundness near,
and you are running fearless in the dark.
Hold it inside, it is still warm
and you will need its light,
there, inside you.
Down the road of time, somewhere
after you’ve aged, traveled,
Explored, discovered.
And the dust around your doorway
has been pounded hard and smooth under your feet.
When you find yourself growing weary and bored,
when your eyes see only ruins,
and your heart is empty.
You may believe, in your exhaustion,
that this is truth, at last.
That the mystery has unraveled,
leaving no wilderness to explore or tame.
All secrets have been shared,
the frontier has dissolved.
Know then, with these thoughts,
you have been swallowed.
The warm belly of the beast
comforts with confining darkness
and lulls with rhythmic sounds
Murmuring to you,
Curl up and sleep,
just go to sleep.
Shake your head,
stretch your legs,
do not sleep now.
Remember what you know.
You swallowed the moon,
you hold it inside you.
Not as a magpie hoarding shiny things,
or wearing the moon for beauty
or bartering the moon for wealth.
You swallowed the moon for this moment.
When you will walk to the water’s edge,
open your mouth, release the moon
and let its light build you a pathway
across the wine dark sea.
©Skorda 2008
Sunday, March 16, 2008
African Grey
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