PS Cottier

Budgerigar

Ten million green commas punctuate blue sky,
quick breaths of swooping wonder, multiplied.
Water-hole is your target; liquid rope pulls you
and the whole emerald sky is diving,
as miniature bodies scoop down to pool.
Your individual markings have taken you
further than native flight; outside the Louvre
I saw you, cold, trying to break in, as pointillist
as Pissarro, but so acrylic in your finish.
Proud but damp escapee from French balcony,
regretting the lost seed and the found liberty.
Plump and fresh, I have heard you were good eating,
a winging fast food charred to a turn;
as far from stringy battery chook as fingers in the fire.
Most know you singly: whistling in cages,
bowing and bobbing, rattling plastic mirrors.
Driven mad you ring and ring chink-chinky bells
or make love to that hard, hard-to-get reflection.

What joy to see you
just once, as you swoop,
one stitch amongst the tapestry,
a blade of grass in feathered turf carpet,
magically landing,
transforming dreary waterside
with that fallen sward of Eire.
Swift dragon of twenty million wings,
fluorescing with your simple, beak-filled joys.

P.S. Cottier

As to the redux, this poem was posted here once before, a couple of years ago. But it deserves a new airing. The photo shows my new budgie, more pastel than the wild bird’s near-emerald. He was bought with the seeds of poetry. I am now spending my life moving his cage around and letting him out in safe places, away from my dogs.

His name is Chomp.

Next week I promise to use words that rest on a thin perch of ideas, as the last twos paras were totally and tragically Facebook. Status: idiotic.

In the meantime, fly your way to New Zealand. (She inserts something witty and slightly patriotic about rugby finals. There is a poem to be written about that, but not here, not this week. Though ‘The Ode of David Pocock’s Calf’ has potential. I’m seeing Victory born from its swelling pregnant muscles.)

Read the works of the other Tuesday Poets by pressing here.