Then go and buy Jo Brandon's newest poetry collection because it will give you all the feels, with all the words, that build and make and do.
The Hanged Pigeon, by Jo Brandon
You are more stark even
than the tarot card I turned
at fourteen:
the Hanged Man, macabre and ridiculous,
his
strangled leg, ankle noose, freefall of hair,
the hard jewel colours I still
associate with death
though the book said it
represented rebirth –
I
heard the elliptical Chorus whisper-sing
first-death, first-death.
I flipped your card walking
through the park
on a day when the sky was too blue
to
be anything other than an illusion;
you
hung like a bauble on a tree, a faded Robin maybe
whose claws should fold easily
over the branches, rigid as tradition,
but has slipped upside
down – and now nothing looks right –
strung up with tangerine mesh
you were an omen
of something.
You wished so hard to avoid
the predictable
that your wings had started to
come away,
and all the vinegar and glue
and brown paper
salvaged from those park bins
couldn’t
have put you back together again.
You might have appeared to me
as Icarus or
a
penny dreadful, but you struck me as the Hanged Man;
not
so serene, not so willing to give yourself up as deeper meaning.
As I spoke to you, tried to
soothe you up in your tree
I could have been in a
fairy-tale asking boons
of any unbelievable creature;
you might transform,
burst from your pigeon
chrysalis or you might grow still
and
provide a medieval spectacle for nine-to-fivers on lunch.
A comic strip of heroic deeds
ran through my head; ladders,
broken branches, clambering,
soft landing, gasps, free-flight
– I left unsure of
what I did and didn’t do to rescue you.
---------
Big hugs and lots of love,
Essss
