erin_go_blog

Sister scalds milk
honey, cinnamon and salt.
She pours two steaming mugs,
brings flat loaves from the oven,
a lump of butter from the springhouse
and a bowl of berries.

Brother's hands thread wet reeds
between arched twigs
poke a stick through for a perch.

He looses the binding on the pouch
works his fingers down around the bird's feet
cradles the wings
lifts him out into the light.
His sister gasps.
For a moment,
his hand relaxes, and the bird is free.

Red bird rises.
The cat has lost him somehow,
though he was eaten,
and he must flee.
He beats the walls and windows
then sees the fire.
He is not fooled by this imposter
dim and dark, nothing like his love
but it calms him, this spark of sun--
perhaps a sign to stay.
He lights on the hearth and gazes in.

Mags sniffs at the hands of the dancer on the right.

These are the hands
that cradle the red bird in its furry wrap.

They belong to a child of six or seven,
with a head full of brambles and curls
and bright hazel eyes.
He seeks a prize to win his sister's smile.
He pushes through thicket,
scrabbles under mossy oaken knees, flips stones.

He feels her gaze on his back
as he turns over the wood for its treasures.
Her face, in the pool of a cupped leaf,
slides away before he can lift it to his bag.

Then he spies the bird,
head tucked into the firelight of its feathers.
So great is his need,
he approaches, silent as owl flight
his breath fills him all the way out
to his fingertips,
closing lightly around the wings.

He picks a cautious path now through the dimness,
the bag steady and safe in his arms.
When her slim hand lifts the latch,
familiar sad eyes questioning above,
a fierce joy explodes inside him,
and he breaks into a run.

Sim stretches, and springs to the sill.
You're right, I tell him.The pattern is called "Dove at the window".
But I've never seen a red dove, so I think this must be a different story.

He blinks and turns back to the falling snow.
Mags kneads and purrs beside me. She knows this story well.


As the earth danced around the year,
first tilting her head,then her hip to the light,
a small red bird circled too,
lighting only on her brightest spots.

The bird was a child of the Phoenix,
a second ashen egg in a nest where there had only, ever been one.
Red feathers and a black eye winked from his cracking shell.
His brother shook out new golden feathers, glanced at him in confusion, and flew off into the dawn.

It was light that he needed, and to light that he belonged.
But he was no phoenix.

If only he could reach the light at the horizon's long end,
he knew he would find the answer to the question he made with his wings.
So he beat the wind, endlessly tracing the sun's path across the tropics.

Each time, as he neared the far point,
he told himself that he had gone a little further than the time before.

Each time he convinced himself
that the next round would release the sun from its prison loop,
and together they would fly off in a straight line towards some greater light.

After many years, and many circles,
all of which seemed very much the same,
he began to lose hope.
But he continued circling.
He didn't know what else to do.

One sunset found him perched on a low branch of an ash tree,
watching his quarry retreat behind the hills.
His despair was such that,
when gentle hands cupped his wings and lifted him to a waiting bag,
he barely noticed.

All was darkness and warmth for awhile.
The bag smelled of fur and sweat,
and he wondered if perhaps a wild cat had swallowed him whole.

Sim's whiskers twitch. He has invented an entirely different ending for this story, which would feature more of the bird's red insides than its feathers.

Mags yawns and stretches, and bats at the people on the red bird square.
That's not the story we're talking about, Sim, she says. This bird is much more than dinner.

The world is white.
The beech outside my window might be a scrape of ink on a clean page, for all I can see of the field beyond. Snow fills the crevices between the branches and seals off the cracks of my windowpanes.

This morning, icy static rang on my windows and woke me.

Too much chaos here, not enough sense, said the gropple.
Make a pattern, it said.

So I pulled a clean sheaf from the drawer, and a pair of sewing snips. I folded each sheet twice, and made the designs-- half a tree here, half a heart there, half a star.
Half a man, his arm reaching to half a woman on the other fold.
Half a leaf, and another, and another, to remember the green I can't see now.

Scattered leaves, hearts, trees and people opened whole on my bed.

I pressed the patterned lace to the windows, half a snowstorm; then the blizzard began.

The cutouts jump from one story to the next on my ratty old quilt.
A white heart finds a center on this orange sunburst, two pale children run into a green jacquard woodland, hands clasped.
White leaves frame a face in blue calico that disappears when I brush them aside.

All these stories-- I haven't the heart to sweep them into the wastebasket.

The cats curl nearby. Mags dreams a calico chase, batting snowflakes and stars, while Sim's golden eyes follow every scatterling story to its conclusion.

He sniffs at a brown square, edges its dancers off to a red bird-block with a delicate claw.
Tell me this one, he says.