The Golden Bird - a sestina
The Golden Bird - a sestina
Connections in this story have long lines of multi-coloured Threads.
And at the heart of timeless-time, is the Time of Gold.
Enchanted-fox-sister, birds, horses, forests and brothers
intertwine in narrative patterns.
The story is an old one, and she who tells it has learned
well her craft.
It is embroidered with rich stiches of characters and
landscapes of colour.
It begins, as so many tales do, with two brothers who are
most outertoumat.
Pulling the wool over the eyes of an indulgent Father is the
gift of the outertoumat.
Those rogues fooled everyone we will see how they pull on
the story’s interconnected Threads.
Two brothers, one sister. A fox offers advice at the edge of
a woods, her red coat colour
flashing by woods and groves, rivers and seas. On her tail
Sister sits, in her eye, a bird of gold.
The bird is just the beginning, a story inside a myth,
within a narrative, told with tale-craft.
Don’t shoot your arrows at her fox-heart or ignore her
advice. These brothers repeat their patterns.
Sister Fox’s instructions are a repeated chant. Remember the
order, the rhythm, the patterns.
The sleeping guards, the deserted castle, the bird with two
cages all very outertoumat.
“What did Sister Fox say?” The girl asks. Find the bird,
leave the gilded cage? It is beyond her craft.
“Take the hard road. Leave the easy path. Reel in the red
Threads.”
She forgets Sister Fox’s words, makes the wrong choice, her
small bird is entrapped in a cage of gold.
Three time she will fail. Three times she will redeem
herself. Mercy is a robe of many colours.
The first slip-up engenders a new task, to liberate a horse
of gold colour.
Sister Fox gathers up the girl, travelling so fast their
hair streams into braided Celtic knot patterns.
“Find the horse. Leave the fancy saddle. Take the leathern
one for the horse of gold.”
Socrates understands why, questioning and investigating,
some situations just feel outertoumat.
The consequence of this mistake is the third task and now
the tightening of the threads.
The daring rescue of the enchanted prince will take all the
girl’s guile and craft.
Now, take Brother Horse and Little Sister Bird, together a
shirt of moon beams you will craft.
The prince lies in the land of dreams and night, it is
bereft of prismatic colour.
For 30 nights together you must gather moon beams and weave
on a nettle loom the threads.
On this shirt embroider every tree and plant, bird and beast
of the forest in rich patterns.
At the end of a month the three had created the finest shirt
but their hearts were outertoumat.
They must find the prince and break the enchantment from the
timeless Time of Gold.
Meanwhile the two brothers had heard of the riches of horse
and bird of gold.
They had discovered the legend of the prince and decided to
get rid of him with an evil craft.
Sister Fox saw them stumbling through the woods and knew of
their hearts of outertoumat.
Setting enticements in their path she led them to their own
delusional colours.
The awakened prince left for his kingdom, the companions were
free to create their own patterns.
Without Father, brother or king to dictate, they built a
house, disguised with spider’s threads.
Outertoumat was dispelled. Their lives of gold were crafted
with threads of love
and patterns of harmonious colour.
Fox, Horse, Bird and sister worked together, made a mythological
workshop
of rare woven and quilted patterns, embroidered in analogous
colours of love.
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