Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Like a Bird


(chalk drawing on my kitchen blackboard)

"I'm like a bird," I said.  "I get up with the sun."

"Me, too," she said in that faux-awake voice we've all used when we are really asleep to show that we are not.  As I got out of bed, she wrapped herself around a big pillow and was gone.

"Yup," I said.  "You are like a bird, too."

I wish I had a big sticky bun to eat with my coffee this morning.  I like them.  They make me happier.  Instead, though, I will make porridge in a while.  One wants to live, it seems, even those who only wanted to stay young forever, even when all the young is gone.

"It's all relative, anyway," they say.

Sure it is.  You should come see me get out of bed, old, bent bird, hobbled, crippled.

"You are no age."

"That's right," I agree.  Who wants to hear the truth?

It is better not to have two birds in the same house when one of them limps crookedly in the dawn's early light.  What good would it be to peak behind the curtain?

"I am the great and powerful. . . Wizard of Oz."

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