02-25-2022, 03:48 AM
Ambrose: a Biography
I spotted you in the Mexican cypress,
the morning after a rainy night,
a strange looking bird, greenish, with a crest
and puffed out cheeks of white.
You seemed immobile, and that stillness
was what finally got me out of my chair
and into the yard. Still you didn’t move
and I saw that you were something exotic.
I put up a ladder and hung a hamster cage with seed
to lure you in, but you ignored it.
Someone on the Internet suggested simply
sticking out my finger. I did and you stepped on,
as though we’d known each other for years.
And we did. Know each other for years.
You rode my shoulder day in and day out,
your gorgeous green and white shit
decorated my shoulders like I was a cockatiel admiral.
Your greatest pleasure was plucking the hairs
on my collarbones until I bled. And I let you.
Alarmed, you would fly in desperate circles,
seldom landing with any grace at all.
You laid a sterile egg, but the experts said
I had to let you try to hatch it, and so you
nested beneath the sewing table for weeks,
nursing a wooden egg I substituted for the stillbirth.
A visiting dog mauled you,
I thought it was the end, but an emergency vet
who happened to know birds saved you,
and I bathed the wound and applied ointments
every day for two months until you healed.
After seven years of companionship
you left me as you first arrived, suddenly.
I went for a cup of tea as you sat on the arm of my chair,
and when I came back you lay dead on the floor,
immobile again but this time forever.
Your traces remain because you loved to nibble
the edges of dust jackets and paperback covers,
and I still discover your jeweled turds in unlikely places,
traces I treasure because each one restores you,
just for a moment, to riding my shoulder again.
I spotted you in the Mexican cypress,
the morning after a rainy night,
a strange looking bird, greenish, with a crest
and puffed out cheeks of white.
You seemed immobile, and that stillness
was what finally got me out of my chair
and into the yard. Still you didn’t move
and I saw that you were something exotic.
I put up a ladder and hung a hamster cage with seed
to lure you in, but you ignored it.
Someone on the Internet suggested simply
sticking out my finger. I did and you stepped on,
as though we’d known each other for years.
And we did. Know each other for years.
You rode my shoulder day in and day out,
your gorgeous green and white shit
decorated my shoulders like I was a cockatiel admiral.
Your greatest pleasure was plucking the hairs
on my collarbones until I bled. And I let you.
Alarmed, you would fly in desperate circles,
seldom landing with any grace at all.
You laid a sterile egg, but the experts said
I had to let you try to hatch it, and so you
nested beneath the sewing table for weeks,
nursing a wooden egg I substituted for the stillbirth.
A visiting dog mauled you,
I thought it was the end, but an emergency vet
who happened to know birds saved you,
and I bathed the wound and applied ointments
every day for two months until you healed.
After seven years of companionship
you left me as you first arrived, suddenly.
I went for a cup of tea as you sat on the arm of my chair,
and when I came back you lay dead on the floor,
immobile again but this time forever.
Your traces remain because you loved to nibble
the edges of dust jackets and paperback covers,
and I still discover your jeweled turds in unlikely places,
traces I treasure because each one restores you,
just for a moment, to riding my shoulder again.