My grandfather was a bird.
Underneath his white hair
he wore crayon-coloured feathers.
They were of broiling gold
and of burning red
and of drowning blue.
One was green the colour of a single blade of grass.
When he walked ahead of me
I could see from his stride how he flew
in the branches of trees.
When his hand curled in my hair
I could feel him perching around me.
When he worked on the end of a shovel
I found how his arms spread wide in a turn.
And when he stood over a bed full of flowers
I saw that his eyes gathered what shone
on the ground for his nest.
When he was gone I remember him sitting in a tree
in a garden which he had planted.
And all the cries of morning were around him.
~ From The Art of Walking Upright (Steele Roberts Ltd, 1999)
