Some Birds Wish to Wear Jewelry by Matilyn Paul

There are rare precious moments in your life when your spirit and body aren’t the same size, and upon passing a pond of serenity and innocence

A familiar God whose name you don’t know but who has always hung three feet above

Calls you forward and folds your legs onto the spotted cement. 

If you listen to this certain note in the breeze, the world will silence its pounding roar and the restful mural before you will rule. 

I was called, and I obeyed. My legs folded onto the spotted cement. They always tell you the sky is blue, but they are often lying. 

The trees breathed orange, the pond screamed in gold, and blind birds broke the water, blue trails streaming from the dresses of their water-beaded feathers. 

Would you believe me if I told you that nothing could compare? 

The bridge between modernization and natural creation.

The humans carved this pond from what the Earth begged the ground to be.

The birds don't know the difference. 

Are they blessed or burdened to not percieve the majesty around them?

If I look to the East I can convince myself I am elsewhere, maybe in some Northern town where pickup trucks rule the roads and women are still forced to dream. 

Maybe something more familiar. 

Maybe something less familiar. 

I can convince myself I smell cedar burning, but the fire in the trees is nothing but the last aching images of dying glamor. Is there anything more beautiful?

I twist the stems of scarlet leaves between my cold-kissed fingers. Vermillion never looked so true. I did not know what that word meant until now. 

Something behind me in the air screams decomposition. I am holding a wilted flower. I am holding the age of seventeen, I am twisting it between my fingers. I am holding the end. 

I idealize, sentimentalize, I bring the leaves home. I will press them in between the pages of Plath and Proulx and I will paste them into journal entries of my pretty day by the pretty pond. 

(You must not recognize it all as coincidence). 

You mustn't think too much. 

Watch the way the water breathes (but God, how can I help myself?) 

The sun is setting, feel the shadow embrace you. Isn't it welcomed company? (but who will I be tomorrow?)

Tap your fingers against the ledge. Imitate the God with no name, try to call someone forth. Perhaps a mallard (I am wasting time, such precious mortal time).

The wind drags its fingers upon the surface of the water, just the surface. Indigo paint that wasn't let to dry long enough, stains of siena and ochre bleeding through.

(Did you know Swan Pond is only four feet deep?) 

And the colors mix to become-

 (Aren't I much deeper? I am, aren't I? Read my words, each chosen carefully read my-)

-my idea of why Earth was created. Such a beautiful array that I cannot stand not to experience the poetry,-

(-poetry. Is it good enough to be called poetry? Can I call myself a poet? Who am I to define such a sacred word? Who are you to tell me I am not-) 

-not to jump in myself and join the birds. (... I wish to join the birds.Who am I?)

The wind drags its fingers… oh. I believe I’ve mentioned that already. Well, the sky, it looked like gold. No.. no it wasn’t that… (I wish to be a bird in the Swan Pond.)

There are rare precious moments in your life when you are engulfed by hoards of birds. People walking their way to and from, knocking your shoulder, talking into their telephone. 

Somehow, there is never a quieter moment than this. 

Somehow, there is solace in invisibility. A lone star poked out of the blackout sky, sitting amongst a sea of others. No name, no knowledge, some already gone.

(Because time isn't real and space isn't either, when we look up at stars in the sky on a cold winter night on a blanket that isn't big enough, and the grass tickles our ankles, we are twisting the stems of leaves in our hands, we are holding the end in our eyes. Most of the stars are already gone). 

The birds are like stars. Not due to their ability to hang in the sky, not their opposition to the smooth color the view up above demands of itself… 

The birds are there each time I pass by the mirror we demean and call a pond. 

They are constant, immortal figures, floating in the pool we dug for them, beckoned them into, and they are none the wiser. 

I tap my fingers against the ledge, I imitate the God with no name. The birds blink, they dip into Heaven’s unclean tears, and emerge crying themselves, droplets streaming down their sleek backs. And they blink. 

Would you believe me if I told you that waltzing from under the bridge appeared a goose with a garland of weed strung across its neck? Nature’s necklace.

It held itself with a certain civility that felt contradictory coming from an animal so shamed, and flaunted its way around the circumference of the pond. 

I tapped my fingers against the ledge, my legs folded on the spotted cement, and the bird blinked. 

But we understood each other. My solemn attempt to free the steady creature from its assumed strangling chains was misguided. 

The bird blinked. I blinked, too.

The bird dove underneath the surface, and upon facing me again, held its head high and revealed to me the chain of ivy that remained across its shoulder. 

I am a woman, and the goose is a bird. But I have as much claim over the life it is living as it does over mine. 

Why did I recognize nature to be strangling the bird? Its mother, my mother. 

I am too used to ensnaring nets and plastic to understand that some things aren't by accident. 

Some birds wish to wear jewelry. I wish to be a bird. 

And maybe I am, traveling unseen, migrating in the face of hardship. Reaching just below the surface. (the pond is only four feet deep)

When does one come to kill the temptation of ease and settle into the idea that ignorant bliss is only a lie to please those without the means to perform anything else?

Perhaps when a familiar God whose name you don’t know but who has always hung three feet above calls you forward and folds your legs onto the spotted cement.