TO THE MOONBYRD, WANDERING

 

we will leave amethyst candies by the night porch

and farther, crowned with may, beyond the moon-splashed grasses stray for the moonbyrd who has flown high now

and lo! above the rose gardens, 

gated against our sleep-walking...

mystic mystic moonbyrd

pecking the peridot leaves off the trees

why have you flown

dressed up in chalks against the

purple impenetrable

backdrop, masquerade of our old summer night.

didn't you like your flutter nutter sandwich? 

you will be lured by our candies anyhow, back to

your cage of light to stay

silly moonbyrd, cousin of firebirds, trailing

pure rubied escapades, feathering the dream skies

or emerald sonorities, someone

else would have said.

I don't know them.

don't eat all the candy candy

sang someone's little brother

it's the bait but I said

it will be snowing candies, soon, 

for the moonbyrd, can't you think? 

we scanned the Christmas skies.

and it is nightfall: tennis shoes soaked

up dew and we miss the measured moonbyrd, 

moonbyrd's blink of ancient rainbows 

slowly revealed, resolved? and we sing

old railroad songs to coax you

learned in school and listen faintly: 

is it angel choirs, who must know where you are? 

and echoing you back oh listen hard for

the parti-coloured shrieking of the gleaming moonbyrd

we stayed up late for, as if you were, Christmas.

all by yourself oh won't you cry? 

we want you to

come home and live in our room.

cease foraging for meteors

by the coloured chalks scattered on

the floor and we will sing to you

(if we can) , the sweet night through

and feed you the candies of pure goodness

truth and beauty.

drift in and out of sleep, my wonder.

were you coloured by hand? 

hopscotched- out of sight-

not once demystified.

we'll tread the angely hallways

back to sleep not tracking the mud

from the rose beds, ever.

dreaming, my wonder, 

only you are free

mary angela douglas 6-7 april 2014; rev.29 august 2014rev.9 october 2014

Note on the Poem: I wrote this poem just minutes after seeing a lovely Academy Award (1959)   cartoon entitled 'The Moonbird' by John Hubley (and then altered it nine times as if it were a costume for a Christmas pageant, you stubborn moonbyrd poem!)  The soundtrack to the cartoon is comprised of his two children in the backyard talking of this and that.

And I am spelling it this way, the wrong way you maybe said but that I think is how the moonbyrd would spell it or the children, at least, in my poem who looked for it.  

Call it a variation if you want to, (variant?)   spelling.  who knows. haha.  only the moonbyrd knows...