Streak of luminous green and yellow,
tiny feet landed on tarmac,
a lost budgie has flown on the road outside my house
The window divides space between myself and this budgie, the window is like a screen between fable and truth.
This is real,
Grandma inherited a Budgie named ‘Beauty’,
it belonged to her old friend,
who had repeated the words,
‘sit down George’, so many times,
that the tiny voice box spoke them,
it was as reliable as the habitual scenes of suburbia
that she watched from the still side of the dividing glass
Since George had passed away,
those echoing words, tormented,
an indiscriminate reminder of her loss,
like a clock with a faltering minute hand,
that splinters time like a broken protractor
So Grandma took the memory, shouldered the burden.
The Budgie on the road is pecking at the tiny loose stones,
the weight of its small body, balancing.
I know these two birds are not the same
but the memory it brought to me was like a parcel
all wrapped up in the flowered paper of Grandmas old house
Yet I did not expect its end,
after the gift, came the jolt.
The blurred lines and moronic roar
the oblivious car dealt its inane violence.
Instant smudge of luminous green and red,
2 feathers sticking up from its flattened mass.
No question here, no uncertainty.
Heart into brain, bone into blood.
It took 2 days for Budgie to be flattened and thinned no further,
road coloured now,
a passing shower washed the grey smudge clean.
Entirely.
a lost budgie has flown on the road outside my house
The window divides space between myself and this budgie, the window is like a screen between fable and truth.
This is real,
Grandma inherited a Budgie named ‘Beauty’,
it belonged to her old friend,
who had repeated the words,
‘sit down George’, so many times,
that the tiny voice box spoke them,
it was as reliable as the habitual scenes of suburbia
that she watched from the still side of the dividing glass
Since George had passed away,
those echoing words, tormented,
an indiscriminate reminder of her loss,
like a clock with a faltering minute hand,
that splinters time like a broken protractor
So Grandma took the memory, shouldered the burden.
The Budgie on the road is pecking at the tiny loose stones,
the weight of its small body, balancing.
I know these two birds are not the same
but the memory it brought to me was like a parcel
all wrapped up in the flowered paper of Grandmas old house
Yet I did not expect its end,
after the gift, came the jolt.
The blurred lines and moronic roar
the oblivious car dealt its inane violence.
Instant smudge of luminous green and red,
2 feathers sticking up from its flattened mass.
No question here, no uncertainty.
Heart into brain, bone into blood.
It took 2 days for Budgie to be flattened and thinned no further,
road coloured now,
a passing shower washed the grey smudge clean.
Entirely.