The Mockingbird on Central

For Steve and I, spring of 1998 was a whirlwind.  We had just gotten married in Jamaica; we had just bought and moved into a house on Central Street in Yorktown Heights, NY; and we'd traveled to Helsinki, Finland to promote Planet of the Blind.  (If given the choice, be sure to do what we didn't do: go to warm, sunny Jamaica after visiting cold, damp Helsinki!)  There was more, but much of it is a blur now, except for the mockingbird that lived in our front yard. 

I have warm "fuzzy" memories of waking up on mornings with the sun streaming outside our open windows.  The birds were back.  You could smell spring in the air.  Steve, who has a habit and a talent for listening would say "there he is".  We'd roll over onto our stomachs, prop our chins on our hands and just lie there and listen.  Steve wrote about it in Only Bread, Only Light (Copper Canyon Press):

The Mockingbird on Central

This bird who lands in the oak tree
Is both a comedian and a natural fact:

In a hundred-years house
We awaken to a sweet thing,

A motor of avian laughter
Ten feet from our curtain.

This is fortune. He sings "La Paloma,"
"Wiener Bonbons,"

L'heure exquise,
Noel Coward, Tonight at 8:30.

What precocity, a bird half the size
Of an Anjou pear

Who filrts like Galli-Curci,
Shows off like Caruso,

And all from an oak branch
Swaying above our porch.

O how he brags at three A.M.!
O how he imitates the happiness of others!

                  for Connie

O how I love this poem!

~ Connie

Comments

[blue girl]

That's just wonderful.

:)

[Janet]

Lovely!
And I bet, in the midst of this January chill, you are wishing you were in Jamaica now.

[Connie and Steve]

Oh Janet:

Ya Mon!

Have you been? BG, have you?

[raymond pert]

Connie,
thanks for following my serial entries on my blindness. You are so right: I'm very fortunate to have survived that accident and it's taken me these thirty some odd years to write about it with any focus. You can probably tell from my blog that performing in Othello (I have a wee, wee part) plus my teaching load at the college is making it a challenge to write. I'll keep installations coming, though, and I'm deeply grateful for your interest and your generous words about my writing.
rp