I met her on a Thursday when the clouds were so high,
and the mountains reached up like a perch for the sky.
She wore feathers the color of air;
I was crusted in callouses left by despair.
Though she chirruped soft sounds I could not understand,
she smelled blue as the wind and I was just a man;
so I offered her my finger as a wrinkly perch
and I carried her like sweet bride right to my church.
I felt joy descend on my cheek like a wing…
All my life I’d been searching for a woman with the blue eyes of spring!
You know, most women are so heavy always clumping their brooms
as they glare from the side of an eye filled with gloom.
I don’t like them, I don’t need them, I don’t want to say why;
but I did love this sweet bird that fell like an egg from the sky.
But gossip grew after only one week
when the maid saw me lower my lips to her beak.
I won’t deny that my mind was impure;
I fingered her soft head and I would have done more.
But I can’t have my life ending in ignominy
Though I’m old I have gold and I’ve earned every penny.
In a perfect world, she’d be my bride and help me to spend it;
instead I carried my bird inside where I knew I must end it.
Standing in the shadow of a chandelier I told her
that I would not be the man to hold her.
She looked at me through lacy eyes marbled with pain
then she flew away, my little bird, I stood there and leaned on my cane.
And it’s true that it haunts me that look on her face;
shadows flow through my heart- yes, I made a mistake.
But I’m a man, just a man- what else more can I be?
I can’t butcher myself in the press so a bird can be free!
Fly away birds, fly away; you know the spring is long gone…
there’s no seeds for you here on my manicured lawn.
Let me rest in my evening chair in the sun’s pinky glow.
Life ends in regret, that’s our world, and its always been so.
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