Clair Mullineaux
Feathers
These feathers, peacock and peahen and eagle-owl,
I gathered like scattered leaves beneath the trees in the Bird Garden.
I didn’t know, I didn’t know the light was going.
Small curving thumb-length feather, mouse-brown, mouse-grey, charcoal-black, soft to the touch as woodsmoke;
the grey of wintry distance, brown of ploughed fields
transmuting itself unbelievably to turquoise, ultramarine,
the green and the blue of the land and the sea in the postcards.
I thought I could leave and carry it with me.
Eagle-owl feather like a legend of tenderness,
soft filaments waving in a ballet of gentleness,
buff just tinged with ginger, barred with charcoal hazy as rainclouds. I should have seen the sky was changing.
Peacock’s tail-feather like nothing but itself,
a gift from the heavens, a blue astonishment.
I didn’t see, I didn’t see the light was going.
They sway in a jam-jar on top of the television,
mouse-brown and taupe and woodsmoke, May-morning green and lapis,
turquoise and indigo, ultra, ultramarine,
the noiseless flight of eagle owl, each hue that we call peacock; messengers from a land I no longer believe in.
I didn’t know the light would leave me.
Page(s) 44
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