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
Louis said,
February 23, 2010 at 3:38 am
Sometimes, it takes the voice of an artist to remind us of that bird on our shoulder…inside of us…to take the time and listen to it…through the noise…
..reminds me of Bukowski’s poem “Blue Bird”…so beautiful and poignant…and his courage to share that…
BLUE BIRD by Charles Bukowski
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
Tasha said,
February 23, 2010 at 11:20 am
Aren’t cuckoos notorious for stealing eggs from other nests?