You can’t have her, the little girl of springtime. No more than you can demand springtime herself return once fall has come. The leaves fall, dear, there’s no denying. There they lay in the dirt where she wriggles her toes, the clay of her ashes made from ashes muddying the puddles irresistible but for the pouncing to any proper child of god, and god did he make her from that finest clay. No, she’s in her element now.
In the glinting tree light of those early days, backs to forest floor, our oldest cathedral dancing the Greek gayity, peeked between leaves, in this way you can see her perform, but no other. And this, the intended way. With appropriate awe and horror and admiration and travesty and reverence not for the girl, but for the clay that shapes her bones and with them her own wilde fancies—the clay that shaped yours no doubt.
But the scenes that racque your mind, the questions that beg relief from toil, those are gone with the wind and the wild notes of his sycamore seeds; gone to plant some poisonous berry far away from your pristine garden. They were poisoning you anyhow, were they not? Best to let the wind take them to creatures with stomachs built for the noir berry. The mule digesteth easily the threat to the mind of man. He simply chews properly with nothing more to perfect than the slow semi-circular grinding of course pallet–his own mortis and pestle, while we ponder and judge like the connoisseurs of berries that we are. Our curse and our blessing, the love of wine, and love itself.
Who could predict the fluttering finch, wings a’gold and silver and red with flame might secretly harbor ambitions of condors for the heights of the westerlies? One avian chance in a million, the tumbling pigeon’s awnry flight, yet it is there, it does barrel through the sky befuddling its saner sisters. And which is the more interesting bird indeed? Which takes to adventure? Which knows the purest high air? Which lives the life of whirling perspective and bears the bugs smashed a’shield for the stories that make brave babes? While you contemplate and fear the flight, she dives, she dives! the deep blue and white and yellow, plundering it’s goodness and fresh fancy. This is the bird of admiration, the valorous flight to heights unimaginable, the gale riding lightning-bird fearful more of stopping than of the storm she sears through on curious -and curiously scarred- wings; the scar is what she’s secretly after.
Her heart beats faster, her pupils spread wide like owls’ saucers in lowliest of night light peering for its marsupial meal. She is hungry for the thrill, the knowing, the high air of lustful living, thirsty for the sating waters of the raindrops as they peel off her sleek wings pried back for the deep dive.
This is the bravest of birds you’ve made. Dare not cage her. Dare you not deprive the world of her fast multicolor glory for the selfish slave life indoors, for cursed be the cursor–that oldest of truths.
The wind blows at her back at acute angle to those wide wings–and she at ours. Here to leap out of nest first, and to manifest the bravery for which our own souls starve.
This bird is the glory of god you seek, and how sweet a fragrance ought she be to your own proud beak; motherbird.