The Truth About Birds
“How
the skin ached as the feathers
shot
out toward light.”
Jim
Harrison
Now that I’m a bird
I have to face my fear of heights.
I didn’t know a bird could sweat,
but here I am atop a cedar
quivering and hot.
Don’t look down,
advice
from my former life, but
why become a bird
if I can’t look down?
I’m no Helios in his chariot
or Icarus in waxy clouds.
I’m not imitating a bird,
I am a bird whose nature
shuns gravity.
There is nothing for it.
I must do what all birds do:
let a blanket of sky swaddle me
in its splendor, trust silvery thermals
to weave me into wing, call
to Aether, the mother of space,
and let go.
Jim Harrison was an American poet/novelist. He wrote 24 novellas, and a 1979 trilogy of them, "Legends of the Fall," became his 1st commercial success. He claimed that he wrote it in 9 days an, in revision, only had to change 1 word. He began his career while recuperating from a fall off a cliff while bird hunting.
ReplyDeleteHelios was the Greek solar god who rode a golden chariot every day from Ethiopia to the Hesperides and then back at night. he was the son of Hyperion (an earlier sun god regarded as God of Watchfulness, Wisdom and the Light) and Theia (the goddess of sight who endowed gold and silver with their brilliance and intrinsic value) and the brother of Selene (the moon) and Eos (dawn). One of his children, Phaethon, borrowed his chariot but could not control the horses, so Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt to prevent the destruction of Earth by fire.
To escape from Crete, the craftsman Daedalus made wings from feathers and wax for himself and his son Icarus. But his son flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, and he fell to his death southwest of Samos.
Aether was the personification of the "upper sky," the pure air breathed by the gods. He was the son of Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (night) and the brother of Hemera (day), by whom he fathered the earth, heaven, and sea; by his daughter earth he was the father of Grief, Deceit, Wrath, Lamentation, Falsehood, Oath, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Forgetfulness, Sloth, Fear, Pride, Incest, and Combat.