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Mother Bird in the Wild Branches Right in the line of my sight outside my window, Mother Bird is singing— It's five-feet long from beak to tail sitting in the eucalyptus-limbs. Shaped from twenty leaveless branches, the only moving thing is its sunlit eye from a leaf whirling in the wind. Its gigantic head over a foot wide like a Calder steel-wired sculpture in a museum, but it's talking to me— "Give me some feathers so I could fly!" I hear thee and rejoice O blessed bird! I recall bird songs from Respighi's The Birds, Camille Saint-Saens' "Swan" from Carnival of the Animals, and Vaughn Williams' Lark Ascending. Then I read Shelley's "To a Skylark", Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale", Attar's Conference of the Birds to inspire Mother Bird to fly out. The next day I'm amazed to see a single "Bird Cloud" over the tree where Mother Bird had nestled— O how it soared to the deepest sky as if gravity sprinkled upward when Beatrice taught Dante that his home is not earth but the stars so he could at last fly skyward. And it's singing— "Hope is the thing with feathers perching in the soul— flying out in space curve by curve, sweep by sweep onto bluest blue." Ah! this winged energy of delight soaring higher still and higher— Away! away! for I will fly to thee returning on rays back to the Sun to pure abundance in white moment on wings of Poesy, I whirl and dance beyond human reason and knowledge to tunes without words filled with wonder. — Peter Y. Chou Mountain View, 10-10-2009 |
/948-BirdBranches.jpg) Bird in eucalyptus tree outside my window /886-BirdCloud.jpg) Bird Cloud over the tree the next day |