from the outside

He sings as he flies. He sings as he sweeps. He sings as he lives the life of the downcast and trodden. You see he isn’t a bird like the others. He isn’t a raven or crow. He isn’t a cardinal, magpie, robin or sparrow. In fact none of birds who have taken the time to know him can even name him. They place him as separate, a bird meant for a different time, a different place, a different forest where the branches are not nearer to death than to life.

But this bird doesn’t heed them. He doesn’t listen or care. He presses his wings while there’s are ruffled. He dons beads to his feathers instead of the dirt and grime. And he sings his songs with a warmth as if someone other than he was meant to hear them.

From a distant land; from across the ocean; on the side of the world were skies are blue, another bird comes. He, too, doesn’t look like the other birds, and his songs are difficult to understand. But he hears the songs sung by the bird living his life in the dying forest. As he hears the songs of the bird, down cast and trodden, he recognizes the voice, the melodies, the harmony, the warmth. With a gentle brush of his feathers he takes the bird back to his land where the birds of his kind have built a pedestal for the voice of this one bird, downcast and trodden. 

For a time this one bird sings for them, selling out shows once, twice, thirty times. The birds of this land hear him. They cheer, and sing, and praise him. Throughout the forest all the birds sings his songs mimicking his voice the best they can. But after two years, three years, four the bird, downcast and trodden, takes fight giving only a promise to return.

With the world in front of him and with the world behind him, the bird, not quite as downcast and trodden, lands again below the trees of the dying forest, setting himself to sing his songs with a warmth that he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to be heard.