This is about my first encounter with death.
But one day it fell
From the sky,
A brown bird,
Not very exotic,
It had a wounded wing,
And its eyes were as black
As my gran's best sequins,
And the bird, my bird,
Put up no resisitance
As I plucked it up
And put it into a shoebox
That I had dressed with grass,
A makeshift nest that I thought
Would make my little bird better,
But my gran said that the bird
Would die from fear,
Fear from what, I asked,
And she said fear of prison,
And I ran to the shed where
My little bird lived to ask
If it were true, but when I got
There the bird was lying on its back
As if in a nursery rhyme,
Its little black eyes closed by
Membranes of tranquility,
And I knew that it was dead,
And I took it from its prison,
For that is what it really was,
And threw it into the empty air
But it didn't fly away,
It landed with a dull thud
Next to my gran,
And she said to bury it
Or put it into the bin
On account it would smell
Before the day was out,
So I buried my little bird
In the garden near a tree,
A place as near to nature
As I could find,
But I kept one of its feathers,
A long one from its tail,
And wore it when I played
Cowboys and Indians,
And I never kept a bird again -
Dogs and cats, yes, but
Never, ever a caged bird.
Chris Fernie, 2006
Poetry by Chris Fernie
Read 568 times
Written on 2006-10-04 at 23:05
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Zoo of love
As I child I had no pets,But one day it fell
From the sky,
A brown bird,
Not very exotic,
It had a wounded wing,
And its eyes were as black
As my gran's best sequins,
And the bird, my bird,
Put up no resisitance
As I plucked it up
And put it into a shoebox
That I had dressed with grass,
A makeshift nest that I thought
Would make my little bird better,
But my gran said that the bird
Would die from fear,
Fear from what, I asked,
And she said fear of prison,
And I ran to the shed where
My little bird lived to ask
If it were true, but when I got
There the bird was lying on its back
As if in a nursery rhyme,
Its little black eyes closed by
Membranes of tranquility,
And I knew that it was dead,
And I took it from its prison,
For that is what it really was,
And threw it into the empty air
But it didn't fly away,
It landed with a dull thud
Next to my gran,
And she said to bury it
Or put it into the bin
On account it would smell
Before the day was out,
So I buried my little bird
In the garden near a tree,
A place as near to nature
As I could find,
But I kept one of its feathers,
A long one from its tail,
And wore it when I played
Cowboys and Indians,
And I never kept a bird again -
Dogs and cats, yes, but
Never, ever a caged bird.
Chris Fernie, 2006
Poetry by Chris Fernie
Read 568 times
Written on 2006-10-04 at 23:05
Save as a bookmark (requires login) Write a comment (requires login) Send as email (requires login) Print text|
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