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For Miss
Susan and Miss Ann, Southern Belles
Trilby and
Melanie daily engage;
One has an office, and one has a cage.
Melanie travels each morning, to fare
Homeward again to the house that they share.
“Trilby! Trilby!” With chirps of delight,
She answers her name,
And more of the same
Greets the fair voyager, morning and night.
Little grey
Trilby is covered with soft
Feathers to bear a canary aloft.
Highlights of ravishing color appear:
Silver and blue like a pearl by Vermeer.
“Trilby, Trilby!” She whistles for bread,
And flies round the room,
Candescent of plume,
Landing at last upon Melanie’s head.
Peaches and
spinach and bread soaked in milk
Make a bird healthy, with feathers like silk.
Trilby’s blue eggs fill a dish plated gold:
Lovely to look at, but sterile and cold.
Trilby, you see
— like
sweet Melanie
—
Is
tarrying late
In finding a mate:
Whatever will be is fated to be.
Caged at the
windowsill, Trilby can look
Where the spry chickadee flits by the brook.
From the bare maples, a spring song is heard
Day after day by the wee sugar-bird:
“Fee-beee! Fee-beee!” Pert black-and-white fellow,
Should Trilby go forth,
Forsaking the North,
Seeking cane-fields where canaries are yellow?
Melanie
walks in the orchard to find
Scenes that bring married contentment to mind.
Father bird sings in his brilliant sky-blue,
Sharing the tasks that a helpmeet must do:
“Truly! Truly! We live for love’s sake.”
The little bluebirds
Who told her these words,
Made of blue sugar, will grace a white cake.
Trilby is
flying through forests unknown
To a carpenter’s shop, in the light of a Throne.
Someone is making an elegant cage,
Far from the sickness and pain of old age.
When souls are free, when hearts have flown,
The things that we love
Are waiting above,
And heaven with birdsong is truly our own.
© 2013 by Ellin
Anderson. All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be copied or used in any way
without written permission from the author. |
