The Golden Bird - a sestina



Delighted to be showing a poem - Golden Bird Sestina in this edition of Haus a Rest zine. https://www.haus-a-rest.com/issue-36-writing-the-space-between . Written during the critical thinking club sessions.

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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