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Ode to a Sapsucker (Ft. Taylor DeBoer)

by Jerard Fagerberg

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A poem about a bird.

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I wrote this poem for a bird.

Red-breasted and proud, you called yourself a nightingale and you were brilliant enough to fool Keats, but not me. See, I know better.

I’ve been reading books about it, manuals that tell me what the red feathers mean, Sapsucker. They tell me that your kind steer south when the weather turns. They tell me if I touch your nest you’ll abandon your young but there is something in your feathers folding together that reminds me of eyelashes during a wink. You are beautiful and you sing, you sing like a book opened by the wind, loud like a tea kettle, pealing like a drift cloud above me, soft like the way a riverbed talks.

I know how you’ve grown used to sunflower seeds and newspaper floors and, trust me, I know that there ain’t nothin’ like taking a shit on someone else’s politics, but we could have more than those cork perch afternoons you spend begging for crackers.

How about mornings spent necking for wild oats and berries or plucking at worms in the dirt? How about catching the warm air rising off the highway, letting it carry us without worrying about how close we got to the sun? We’ll be the animals they made us to be. Let me be your instinct – the one that urges you to peck at the fingers clicking against your cage; but do not suppress me. Do not swallow me instead of screaming. Let me be that something wild in you. Let us get acquainted with the sky and men will watch us from tree moss bunkers with binoculars, marveling at our posture, wishing they could be as free.

Some of them, some of them will paint us: autumn rust for our talons, mica for the tips of our wings, and alabaster white for our intentions. And you, Sapsucker, you will be centerpiece. They will paint you with a brush made from the finest hair of a lesser animal, texturing your gentle breast with a light whisk meant to mirror what they imagine you must feel like.

We could be that soft.

Or we could be hard, hard like the way shutters rattle in a storm, hard like how marble pushes back. We could be vulgar, wild, swapping gnashing beaks with each other. Let me press my palm to your heart, let me press into you. Let me be that something wild in you, the red feathers on your throat or the song you keep in it. Let us break this together. Be the hammer – let us break, crack like knuckles. These words, they’re not as hollow as the bones that allow you to lift but allow me to lift you the same.

But you, you treat me like a house cat, like I’ve been clicking my claws on the tiles in the kitchen, plotting ways to lift the latch when no one was looking and steal you. You’re happy with the newspapers and simple seeds. Sure, you can sing Sapsucker, but not like the nightingale – not like those birds who got something wild to sing about. Me? My love is wild like the rain, falling in ribbons, running like a river, crashing like a cataract, pooling into oceans and these oceans – these oceans of love – well, they’re more fit for a fish.

credits

released January 7, 2012
Jerard Fagerberg (Poetry)
Taylor DeBoer (Guitar)
Dan Koster (Production)

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Jerard Fagerberg Minneapolis, Minnesota

Jerard Fagerberg is a poet and writer currently living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has been known to make mountains of even the slightest molehills. Yes, he would love to perform for you.

@JGFagerberg
JGFagerberg@gmail.com
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