A flash of black and white tinged with fire flies through the air. It stops, perching on the underside of the screen enclosing my lanai. In stillness, it becomes a red-bellied woodpecker. The woodpecker dashes around the enclosure, desperately trying to find somewhere the screen isn’t. It can’t comprehend this nearly invisible barrier pinning it down. It pecks at the screen, but its beak finds nothing to chip away at. It can see its brethren in the trees beyond, but it cannot reach them. A cage is still a cage even if you can see the sky. I step onto the porch and open the screen door. The woodpecker still can’t figure out how the world has changed so suddenly. I begin to herd it toward the open door, and still it pecks and pecks, fighting against this thing it cannot understand. Slowly, slowly, I guide it closer to freedom. When the woodpecker finally finds that small rectangle of escape, it flies so fast I lose it just beyond the threshold. For the woodpecker, at least, the world is right again. I close the screen door. It’s not the exit I’m searching for.
WEEKEND POTPOURRI:
Currently on repeat:
I’m obsessed with Jeff VanderMeer. The Southern Reach trilogy is one of the best stories I’ve ever read. Ten years after the third book was published, VanderMeer has now released a fourth: Absolution. Here’s a conversation he had recently with Orion Magazine about the new book and the world of Area X.
A(nother) poem:
CAGED BIRD
By Maya Angelou
A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom. The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn and he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.
Damn woman, the way you see the world is just truly poignant art, just love it