" Penelope and the Birdman "
And it is this battle of the giants that
our nurse-maids try to appease
with their lullaby about Heaven
Freud
1.
Afterwards, unsettled, I travel
for days. The moon, thin and curved like a bone,
points to a new paradise. I sweep the forest
floor, cast fishing nets in pine branches
above our bed of needles.
I fill the forest with favourite things:
marmots, and chattering bats. Of course,
I will add turtles and rabbits. We read to each other
by the glow of wolves' eyes, a string
of starfish, varnished fireflies.
The earth hardens beneath our backs.
I make this bed among lady slippers and ferns.
I make him discard everything but his Argyles, loop
his pocket watch on the twig above. Bedtime,
we thrust and sing. The watch swings
back and forth, dropping minutes.
In the sleep of trees owls devise
a plan to furnish him with wings. Each morning
we sift piles of dead birds. We don't fear death,
and nor do jackdaws, apparently. Certain birds
embrace suicide, sling themselves at oaks:
swallow, nightjar, bullfinch, crow.
My lover promises once this work is done
he will return to me. I will knit Argyles
and wait. Birds have given up breath
for him. Among their feathers now I gather
faith, and rinse away their sticky blood.
2.
It's easy to see that his purpose is love.
He unstrings the beads of time in the sun.
It's easy to see that his purpose is death.
He sings to an implacable fire.
His mother was a lapwing, his father
part kite, part nightingale. He carries her
cries back to him, as if they were coins
to unspend time, to unpawn summer.
3.
Dear Icarus,
she writes, I envy you
the flavours of the sky. I lie in the cradle of the earth. I saw
deer today, I saw a falling star
and I wanted to show it to you. I will be faithful. You vex me
tonight. I am a firefly so easily trapped
in your hands. The forest floor is littered with the dead.
How can I be so cold in the summer? You are in a strange
mood tonight. Stop talking this way. The sky may not
be real. Dear Skylark, I saw
a snake today, a brown-striped
one. I have a broken shell, and blue
was the blue of the sky. A periwinkle was
my lover's eyes and you are free.
I have let you go.
There was a spider
in the lighthouse, a dry web
on my face.
Memory spirals
up the gallows hill.
Dear Peregrine, don't fall.
4.
At night the earth shrivels and you whisper
stories into my ear. They are not fairy tales.
If I were truly hungry for you, if jealousy were
a gold chain that I could clasp around your neck,
then I would covet the hours you spend without me.
You tell me the story of a bird who starts as a boy.
He leaves his home to bring home a masterpiece.
You want me to accept this. You want me to lie
under a juniper tree and wait for your return.
I regret that you had no angel to carry you
in her arms. It hurts me to know those tricks
your father showed you. I offer you this consolation:
two people tell each other stories among
gossiping trees, write each other a happy ending.
5.
on the griddle of the sun
your dreams melting like butter
and when you leave me
to sleep my eyelids will flutter.
© 2004 Laurie Byro / Ivan Waters
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