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A Cry for Birds


by Darryl Price


The table is the first thing to be set, but 
the stage is always being dismantled by some Joe with 
no remorse for the carpentry involved in that particular sorrow. 

He's always standing in the wings with his cardboard box 
in his hands waiting to sweep the place clean the 
silent moment you exit. Time for something else to start, 

the next chapter. Immediately, if possible. You can join in 
or you can bloody well fade away. Being on the 
lonely outskirts of newly happening towns is no summer picnic. 
It only causes your own forgotten parts of a dream 

to glow again for a lost moment in muted recognition. 
Nothing stays the same. It doesn't matter how much love 
you added to it in your eight days of heaven 

or hell. It has used up all of itself in 
return. At least you gave it some of your own 
motion. At least you made it move toward the freedom 

of silvery dancing in the alive moonlight. I know how 
much it took out of you. We all do. There's 
only one thing that can come alive now in that 
same way, just not in that same room. Don't cry 

for birds. They get to fly, whatever else befalls them. 
You and I get to be ourselves, if we can 
find ourselves, amongst all the modern wreckage. It all ends
 
up in the same warehouse, after coming off the same 
barges, to be unceremoniously dumped into the same mountainous hole 
full of cracked, broken and used stars. Even the ones 

who remember your name won't want to carry that burden 
forever. You've got to be the one to say your 
own full name to the whole damned, indifferent universe and 
mean it for as long as you can muster a 

somewhat steady whistled tune. It's not a prayer. Don't bring 
that nonsense into it. It's a declaration of independence, a 
self-proclamation of being alive, no matter what dimension you find 

yourself inhabiting, before the big red balloon pops, and spoils 
all the fun and misery of life itself. Solving the 
mystery doesn't solve anything. It only makes it go that

much deeper. The mystery of the mystery is an onion. 
It will make you cry if you don't chew some 
long lasting gum in the process. Turns out, the answer 
is whatever it wants to be, because it's all in 

your head. So choose wisely. Be mighty. Birds have very 
little to do with it. They are the representatives of 
just one simple and at the same time grand possibility. 

One unsure outcome among many holy ways to go home 
again to the place where you will always belong. You 
can never get far enough away from yourself to forget 

to remember the human folly, but you might to forgive 
yourself for being curious of the obvious dangers so often. 
We aren't the angels. We are the people. We made 
beautiful music out of stones and storms. That's our story. 
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