3 posts tagged “feathers”
I woke to a clattering of feathers outside my window. A mad brushing against the glass, a panic of pinions beating furiously, trying to follow the sunlight that blithely shone through the solid transparency.
Silver wings beat against the glass with a delicate fear, feathers extended like clawing fingers. But this was all I saw. What had awoken me with its weight of inconsequence, its agitation that was so pitiable, yet so exquisite?
Perhaps it was the heel of Hermes' winged sandals that brushed against my honored window sill. With a mind full of Greek cartography leading from the clouds to the earth and arms full of Olympian messages, couldn't a god stumble?
Or maybe it was a falcon, weary of fetching for kings. Shaking off its golden bells and tearing away its leather bands, it flew towards my little window. Centuries sang through its wings as it sought the fragile haven: past history and beyond time - now nothing more than mere numbers in the air. Its grimacing talons bit into the wooden frame that protested with broken paint and splinters.
But what if those frothy wings came from another source? What if, just beyond my yearning vision, there was an ocean teaming with life and muscle? With tendons and bone stretched into a mythological quest and diamond hooves sparking against the homely walls, Pegasus had fallen out of the sky.
The atmosphere around his crystal skin was charged with lightning, and his ivory head was encased in Bellerophon's golden bridle.
It could have been any of these things. But before I could get out of bed, the frail enigma was gone. So - fortunately - I will never know what it was.
Decades ago, carcasses rode high. Perched, poised and stuffed, they were trapped beneath silk netting and created a coy diorama above the ladies' hats, the large hats, the fearsome hats.
Birds, glass-eyed and full of straw, were arranged by diabolical milliners into a frozen mockery of flight - no longer enticed by the breezes that curled and tickled.
Feathers were pinned to the monstrous brims that hid the ladies from a sky grown increasingly empty and silent. Torn from back and wings, plucked from breasts and tails, they were anchored by jewels: copper-veined turquoise, milky jade, rubies that fumed like dragons' eyes. The feathers were no longer warm with nature's delicate tints; they were dyed in shameless, brazen colors, wrapped around a prostitute's beckoning finger.
But time has passed, and since then birds have flown before the reach of fashion's degradation. They look back from the safety of a less profligate world to one of dissolute plundering, when bodies fell from the sky in a black rain.
The ones I saw wouldn't be so bold if their chaste plumage was still sought in the cause of dishonored decoration:
They probably have no recollection of their ancestors, pinned like halted butterflies; inert ships sailing above the heads of their mistresses. Their DNA is crowded with migratory itineraries, flight maps, astronomical charts, longitudes and latitudes traced across an unknowable planet - no doubt there is little room for any remorse for those whose travels were arrested so long ago.
When I was walking home, I saw a curious thing rolling towards me. It was small and light; it was blown across the sidewalk like a bite of tumbleweed. Or it could have been spools of dust drummed up from earth by a confused wind - bursting into confused shapes as it bounced off the sidewalk.
I walked towards it - it was momentarily still, shaking and weary in the indeterminate breeze. I looked closely. It was a bird's nest. Made of countless threads of dried grass and stripped twigs, it was a woven home, a knit of natural things, gently made through the diligence of two sparrows. Little bursts of life, with songs of boldness and pride, they built their nests every Spring, following the commands of the DNA coursing through their veins.
And now the results of one couple's homemaking lay at my feet. The nest was the color of dried flax, and it was the size of a cupped hand. The middle was hollowed out and lined with pale, winsome feathers. Down, plume, semiplume: the parents had dug deep into their breasts to tear out a cushion of warmth that would complete a bed destined to protect a chorus of helpless lives.
Once part of a sparrow commune hidden in the shadowy, airless eaves of the welcoming houses, an errant wind had lifted it from its moorings like Dorothy's prairie home, and taken it for a ride of confusion on the airy columns, streams and currents. Only instead of stopping to crush a witch, it stopped in front of me.
