The Eagle and The Wood

There are a lot of tall interesting things in the city, but sometimes it is also important to look down.

I wrote that last night and then discovered I had nothing else to say, and that it was 4 am, and I was so exhausted it took a herculean effort to haul myself off the couch to brush my teeth and proceed bedward.

And now I'm in an absolutely foul mood. I get that way sometimes, though these days it always seems to surprise me when it happens; I guess I've become more accustomed in the last year or so to feeling happyish. I can't say I've missed the depression - it's not a whole heck of a lot of fun, though there are certainly a few things going on right now that would account for it.

I have to both work and do my horrible frightening taxes this weekend, and I haven't yet decided which to do first, or how to arrange them. I am usually better off if I take one day off on a weekend than if I work both days, but this is a lot.

And there is also the fact that I need to bring my bike back to the shop sometime this weekend to get a little more work done on it, and I have a (brand-new! whoopee!) pain going on that is making me think tomorrow would be a better day for that. Which would mean today ought to be the work day, but I don't want today to be the work day. I am exhausted. And working on taxes would definitely push me over the edge of mere rotten grumpiness into dangerous dark despondency and possible fury.

So... I don't know.

Annabelle asked me to write her a poem about transformation, and it came out all fakakta'd (my very bad spelling of a Yiddish word which roughly translates to fracked-up). That is to say, it came out as more of a short story than a poem, but I reproduce it here for the sake of having something else to say other than massive grumbling.

***

All day the wood dreams of being a bird
his soft molten heart unfolds in the sun
watching them dance from branch to branch

One morning he tried to grow wings, one by one
stretching each cellulose fiber
breaking his own bonds in the attempt
But he was still a block of wood

---

One day the eagle saw him basking in the window,
watching the lesser birds flit
Sparrows would come up and chatter
the ravens mocking,
then flapping slowly off
to find treasure

The eagle stood
on the very edge of the sill
preening one long feather
and asked
Why should you wish to be like us?

When you are as stable as the ground
smooth as the sea
and live twice as long as we?

The wood looked into the light
and answered
What is the good of living twice as long
if you cannot bend your nose into the sky?

So the eagle grasped the wood,
one end in each long claw,
and flew him all day about the earth.

The wood saw the purple sea below,
the spiky tops of trees
the blood of antelopes slain on the plain
the dartings of the lesser birds below.

Once the eagle put him down on a stone
while it swept down to eat a rabbit.
When it came back, its claws smelt of blood,
and some seeped into the wood.

Once, they rested in a field,
and the wood was washed in lavender petals.

At the end of the long day,
the eagle asked the wood
where it would like to rest.

Could I live at the top of your nest, Eagle?

Yes, my friend.
You shall guard my chicks and be
the marker for other eagles
to know this den is mine.

---

Every evening when the eagle came in from his hunt,
he would clean his feet
on the wood, and then grip either end
with long claws
- and off they'd fly to hunt bats.

All words and images copyright 2008 Lizbon Grav