This Bird Has Flown

contribution for one of Susan's students.

This Bird Has Flown


I thought I'd call her today
a little too late.

I'll always recall how she drew us out,
Frightened children, who wanted to do it,
but couldn't even say it.
From Keats to Byron to Shelly and the Bard,
We struggled to find words for our hearts,
and meaning in our basest needs.

Then the day came to test our wings.
We fluttered and floundered and some of us soared.
Oldest pains, deepest dreams, lusts for life
spilled off pages from our mouths into those hearts
with an ear for the fantastic and a lust for life.

We then left and never came back.
A few times we'd call, or drop by and talk,
but mostly we lived - check to check.

I took orders, then traded columns for murderers,
then dug for humor once more.
All the while thinking about the eagle soaring high above me
The bluejay fluttering outside my grasp
and the dove who left me under the cinnimon tree
Alone.
This bird has flown.

My wings, black, couldn't beat air,
but as I started to heal, I began to run:
Beating pavement for a cure to the silence that grows,
cutting and keeping us from long-life of laughter.

Away from my pen, I try to fly again,
If only short bursts.
I still long to be a paperback writer
Still long for the night when my soal took flight,
riding after the breeze with a girl with corn-silk hair
who shared her mother's grin;
Hopefully never her end.

So I look up that friend who gave me leaves of wisdom,
a gift to a fledgling just beginning to take joy.
Hoping to hear she's well,
still beating wings against the wind.

But alas. The branch is bare.
The air is still.
And I find I've returned to the nest too late to tell her,
simply,
Thank you.


-- Phil Attinger, on the teacher who gave me wings.