PLUMAGES

We’ve been wearing a winter coat
like drab and tired feathers
and an old beaten hat
like a drooping crest.

Grey days, grey skies, grey hearts.
Barnyard birds of routine,
low horizons, chicken wire souls.
We peck at what’s given us.

Why don’t we wake up early
tomorrow and catch the sun
in the drop at the end
of the drain-pipe?

Why don’t we sing to the moon
for a change and ask foxes
to dance their tangos
and wild tarantellas?

And then let’s change clothes
with phoenixes
and steal thunder
from the peacocks.

Then we’ll stand arrayed in opal
and emerald plumage,
in scarlet and tangerine
and pinions of azure and silver.

Then we’ll be kings and queens
among daisies and irises,
in poppy-fields and thyme-gardens,
through the bluebells
and even among the roses!

Then we are the crested emblems
of life in the air,
life among flowers,
life even in the barnyards
and the crates off to market.

Let’s never take off
these beautiful clothes.

from my poetry friend, Kate Chadbourne

photograph, Milwaukee County Zoo
Milwaukee, WI