My misery will be beatitude
Smiling at grief, grim and gray
Till I see two little birds afar, fly
Tweeting in fugue of melodies unknown
And sit on the back of my weak palm
Frolicking with the beads of Rosary
Wreathed by pearls of wishes porcelain,
Bringing the message from the Queen
Above to her votary sentenced in sadness
Patience in Blue and Fortitude in Green.
I always feel guilty about leaving Toro alone when I go to work. It would be best to add another feline companion, but the existential circumstance prevents it. Hence the flying tenants moved in. The new parakeets are Sera (Blue) and Pippi (Green), who demonstrate that the phrase “eats like a bird” should be part of the Woke movement of removal. They are also unknowingly clever and perceptive that I wonder if they are secretly enchanted humans serving their time for misdeeds till the spell is cast off.
Toro, aka the Curious Cat, also seems to know that Sera and Pippi are a joint force to be reckoned with, so to speak, but nevertheless shows undeterred attention to every move the duo takes with feline discreetness. Timid but curious, Toro wants to touch the moving feathers of parakeets whenever they come out of the cage for sauntering. But the birds show no fear but irritation against the unwanted friendship from the lonely feline. Poor Toro. I console him after Sera pecks his little nose with her dainty beak in protest against his pawed touch. However, my original purpose of making the birds friends with Toro is still valid because both Sera and Pippi do not altogether repulse Toro with wild shrieks of danger.
I hope the birds will be warm to Toro as time goes by till we move to a bigger and better place to live so that I can bring another cat to the family.
Twinkle, emerald dreaming,
Love flocks in blue and green,
Curiosity stalks love’s gathering,
Loneliness emboldens attempting
touch of love fluttering in longing.
“So you have now the earth, the water, and the sky in your room! Awesome!” That was my brother when I told him over the phone about my recent adoption of a parakeet from a Petco. The paroxysm of excitement catapulted me into the awareness of a reality that I did bring a bird—those small but sharp beaks and those wrinkled tarsi feet manifesting the atavistic characteristics of dinosaurs, particularly the T-Rex. The truth that I now have to cohabitate with the least-likely coveted descendent of T-Rex still swivels my head in wonderment as if the ghost of Alice in Wonderland possessed me. So why the bird then?
While there might be the remotest chance of using my parakeet as a divine medium to consult my future, I have recently brought Sera home with great expectation of making a friend with the lonely Toro. Toro is now one year and four months old, and his growing curiosity calls attention for a playmate to share his enthusiasm and vociferous nocturnal stamina. Of course, the kinship of feline presence is the best option to fulfill the requirement. Still, the existential circumstances of present life eliminate it. Hence the lot fell into a blue parakeet I named Sera after the talking bird Serah, a travel companion of Sinbad the Sailor, from my favorite childhood cartoon. As you can guess, Sera is a girl who spends most of her time in front of the mirror and then trills in high soprano like a pretty and prim starlet prima donna.
My endless attempts to tame Sera to sit on my finger and her constant ignorance of my presence are both disheartening and ireful. Toro is a susceptible and timid cat who denied looking at dead fish by turning away his head from the sight. Even though Toro wishes no harm on his new friend Sera, who fastidiously avoids him with all her feathers and beaks, she defends herself from him with all her might. Toro looks at me with his large sad eyes full of liquid heartaches whenever the conflict occurs, and I comfort him in my arms. Sera then flaps her tiny pretty wings, returns to her castle, and ensconces herself on a twiggy perch with a loud and snappy chirping as a sign of victory over the feline Goliath.
I still don’t know if my decision to extra-species friendship is counterproductive amid Sera’s callous attitude toward Toro and me despite our apologies and continuous endeavor to reconcile with her. Perhaps I should not have taken Sera yet from the cage while she might have been still not familiarized with her new home. Still, there’s hope in my Pandora’s Box weaved in a rope of sparkling diamonds that promises a dazzling delight of trust and love filling the loneliness of the little hearts in our room. Who knows, one day Sera suddenly talks both Korean and English and tells me my todays and tomorrows? You never know.
I hear the echoes of the screaming skies
From a distance where a day goes to die
As Helios’s chariot finishes a day’s race
With a long scarlet tail of the glowing smokes
Spreading into heavens and earth ablaze.
The dusk murmuration has already left me
In the lurch of neverending longing for love –
The sweetness of spirit, the warmth of soul
Carried on the wings of messengers of fate:
Owls, Swifts, Blackbirds, Cranes, Starlings… –
The lonely souls of the dead now together
Fly the memories of tears and heartaches
Into the world of nature that never fails them.
So I wait for a murmuration all over again
Standing on a top of the hill or on a high cliff
To catch the screaming flock of ghosts in flight
And wish that I could become one anon.
What if the present is not present but dreamt?
What if the past is not past but future forecast?
For all of this, I am living now is reenacted
Of the previous life, I once lived forgotten
But not erased in the paroxysm of sadness
That my soul cannot bear without tears
And the heart refuses to shield in reason
Because the grief weighs against hope –
The forced illusory vision to staged elysium –
With every fate already weaved, cut, and shipped
To Destiny from Departure to Arrival, and again
Till the Moon orbits the Earth for 1000 years
To live 1000 lives elsewhere in whatever forms,
Each bearing pieces of cracked memories
Reflecting the central fractures of the pasts
In the circle of life, the wheel of lives.
Alas, poor soul! I know her, dear reader!
Pity her not with the condescension of charity!
But give her a rope at the end of a life
Not to fall into the cruel rat race of the rut
Not now, not ever, once, and that’s all for good.
The bird in a cage
Trills on a swing.
Delight beckons.
Under the dome of the spirit
In the palace of the soul
The bird tells the future.
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