Ostriches of Autumn

_____________________

She's a young bird with an old soul. Sings the old ways. Crooning for the lonely. With her long o's and her bittersweet odes. She's got laments to keep herself pining, like a momma bird twitching, picking up sticks and newborn scars.

Her nest's turned empty. So it goes.

Her gothic eyes are black as clouds shushing! at the sun to steel the darkness. She knows the night like the ridges of her feathers. She's felt every kind of rain pelting, her breast exposed, winter’s ice dripping with spring's forward promises.

She's seen how the young ones bleat and laugh from a distance, with their scarecrow eyes all-blacked-in. They come flying into her hollow, her home, the old neighborhood, whispering how she's “an old coot" and "a crazy old bat." They come round here, hauling out drugstore parking lot finds like it's All Saints' Eve. Waxy papers crumpled, tossed aside. "Just a touch of padding," they say, "for when the twigs wet with slush."

Who needs them? Brooding lot of prattling hens! That self-righteous gaggle can keep their torn-off corners of day-old bread. What's it to her?

Hers might be an old nest, but it's a strong nest. Fortified, and all her own. Don't nobody else build them like they used to.

She's watched bright flora, greener than green, and so naive, giving in to summer's tragic romance. Watched how new things hunger, pecking, undignified, at soft-turned soil, snapping out all the worms, like its owed.

.

And then he slips in, riding her feathers, too close. He plays at singing her melody, smooth as midnight in Vermont. Don't mean a thing. Temptation's just the calm before the storm. He's the epitome of emptiness, the face of shadows.

This is her hollow. Her tree. Her home. Her own fine melody.

But there are nights, those long-drawn yearning nights, when she envies the Ostriches of autumn. Those fools are only too willing to duck, to turn a blind eye, to bury what's too hard. Telling themselves it'll all blow over.

What a lark!

He thinks she'll share her nest if he comes calling, cuz it's him. But she won't.

He won't return. Don't think she doesn't know it. She's a young bird with an old soul. She knows better than most, winter's no man's first choice, and she's not moving from her perch.

Still, she watches from the shoreline as his figure splits the sun.

_____________________

Copyright © 05/02/2024 by Christy Munson. All rights reserved.