Cuckoo Birds
I’m thinking of the secret life of birds. All around us they exist, like beings of some parallel universe. One sits just behind me right now, like a ghost in the window sill. It’s one of those cuckoo birds, coo-cooing right there by my head. A cuckoo bird, living right behind me here. And as in a painting, the background sound of the Cukoo bird. I listen to its lonesome coo-coo all day long. A flying school of big white predatory seagulls squeals by on their way to distant ships and faraway kingdoms beyond my pointy rooftop. Cars and garbage trucks are part of nature too in the street down below this muted space of steady breathing and morbid contemplation.
The clouds roll by my window and the cuckoo bird flies away in a theatrical ruffle of feathers and wild bird energy. Off to inhabit the next ledge, I suppose. But the steady breathing of its presence continues behind me now, as if to remind me that we all live with a cuckoo bird at our shoulder. In that I know I’m never alone.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010
