The Fluttering

Outside my window there fluttered a bird…

I opened the window and in it flew. It alighted upon my table and became a story, a book of many pages full of emotion and history. Poet, poet, you anchored the story and it became a masterpiece that fed and accompanied human hearts from generation to generation.

A century of sleep passed again. Again again the night dawned and swallowed up the world. From the depths of my sleep a sound extracted me, the flutterings of a bird. Outside the window, woman or bird? Woman and bird? A woman stands behind the bird. With sleepy eyes I her behold, a waif of moonlight, standing outside my window, an ephemeral beauty, a strange woman…

I open the window and walk to her. Dimly I was aware of the bird that flew in through the open window into my chamber even as I walked out of it, into the tired night. The glass door shut behind me, Noah’s ark sailed away sans poet. There she stood before me, the night’s promise, unfulfillable. A thousand pleasures she would give to me, but none quenched my thirst… Until it dawned that she was the thirst itself, cyclically renewing itself, fawn Sisyphus.

Wearily I dragged myself back to my window; shut. It was shut, long shut, with me on the outside. Looking in I make out, upon the table, another book, another distant story. Buried in my heart. Like a visitor at a glass tomb, thoughtfully I look back in time. It used to be a bird, a bird that once flew to me. Sadly I gaze at the scroll through the infinity of a glass window. I can see the book, but I cannot reach or read it. Poet, poet, awakend and then distracted, unable to anchor your story, the very reason for your awakening. How does it feel to gaze upon your calling and be unable to enter it?

Weary and more you find the door and enter, but generations have since passed… the table, it is empty.

So here you go, sleeping again. A century and many more of restless dreams. Then you hear it… the fluttering… outside your window. The night is dark, the moon is pale and skeptical, the glass is scratched, the witch is calling and the bird is fluttering…

Do you remember? It’s been a long sleep. Memory has become a distant memory. Who is this moon? What is this woman? Why is this night? When is this window? How is this bird?... Even yourself you do not know anymore. Long was this sleep.

Poet, poet, you move in my heart. Like a bird fluttering outside my window. Time is my window. If I open it and let the bird fly in, I will see and remember that it is no ordinary bird, but a memory being, a poem, a story which, anchored, will grow wings and fly into the hearts of those who are thirsty outside…

Poet, poet, you move in my heart.

Che Chidi Chukwumerije