Come fly with me!!

            For a Perch, That Red Settee
 
A glance out a window reveals red and rust
tines.  Blast.  Forgot to put away the rake
again.  Cloud eight or nine months along. 
Rake’s reputation more-or-less shot.  –Moi’s?
Puh-leez.  Forget one more time, our gooses
(geeses?) will hit the microwave.  Just finish
my coffee, then I will get right. . .Well,
what do you know?  Milady has come to call.
Red sparks as she balances on a whisker-
thin tine.   I can feel the down settle on her
va-va-voom breast.  Electricity zzzt around
her twig legs, splayed toes, raised beak,
and sassy, upthrust tail.  Satisfies herself
that the coast is clear, sets off on another sail.
Whisks through a sea of competing branches
and the tattered remains of hangers-on.
Don’t tell me she does not know
she tacks better than Ahab.  Breeze helps
by staying behind.   She knows, I know,
that  the oatmeal clouds and blue rags
are November’s idea of a sky.  Eyes
that bright cannot miss.  Why she builds
the best nests and spots the best spots.  Puts
only so much trust in Milord..  She cleans,
he cleans.  Hatches, hatches, gathers, gathers,
get it?  Both see the good in a mailbox
went south.  Route tube or hanging basket
housed a geranium.  Engineer?  No prob. 
Materials – twig, cardboard, root, moss,
bit of string/whatever --may stretch three times
her length.  Just shrugs, picks ‘er up,
gits ‘er done.  Girl  knows when to sing,
when to blue the air!  To be still
is agony, but that’s what it takes, she’s there.
See?  See?  She can teach a baby to fly.  Knows
how to let go.   Knows to let Mother dress
her in gray and dun so she’ll blend, yet stay
every ounce her.  Get tired, always make a rest-
stop out of a sapling or some airhead’s rake. 
 
Back again, Milady?  Quick, everybody, come
meet a class act.  The original, the no-nonsense,
the first lady tramp:  Ms. Carolina Wren!


(c) Phyllis Jean Green,  November, 2006 

          For Debbie and Caylie

 

 


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