Ostriches of Autumn

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She's a young bird with an old soul. Sings the old ways. Croons 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.

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, hemmed against her frame to shield her from the fallen snow.

She's felt every drip of rain pelting, her breast exposed, winter’s ice sloppy with spring's forward promises.

She's seen the other 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, tweeting she's an old coot or worse. Crazy old bat.

They come round here hauling out drugstore parking lot finds like it's All Saints' Eve. Waxy papers crumpled, tossed aside.

Who needs them? Brooding lot of prattling hens! That self-righteous gaggle can keep their torn-off corners of crusty day-old bread.

What's it to her?

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

She's watched bright flora lose its green. So naive, giving in to summer's tragic romance. It's inevitable, winter's cold return, his icy fingering turning the pure white to a sappy river rushing anywhere that isn't here.

She's watched the newborns' hunger. All that undignified pecking, working the tough-turned clay, snapping out worms. Like its owed.

.

And then he slips in, riding her feathers, coming 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 shadow. She knows too well the murder of crows.

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

.

But there are nights, those long-drawn nights spent twisting in the wind, when she's envied the ostriches of autumn. Those fools are only too willing to duck and cover, to bury their heads. Forget their hearts.

What a lark!

He thinks she'll share her nest when he comes calling, cuz it's him.

But she won't.

She's nobody's bird.

He won't come again. She knows a thing or two.

She's a young bird with an old soul. Winter ain't a cock's first choice.

And anyway, she's not moving from her perch.

.

Still, she watches the waves cresting against the shoreline as his figure splits the warming sun.

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