The Bird is Important

For this week's Poetry Thursday, participants are asked ("completely and totally optional[ly]," of course) to muse about a line that dances in our heads. Perhaps we could take off on that, write a poem of our own from it.

My muse comes from Anne Sexton's "Cinderella": "The bird is important, my dears, so heed him."

It's not so much the dance of the line that attracts me; it's the potency of it. The bird is important. To me, sometimes, the bird is everything: portent, harbinger, scavenger, lover for life, teacher, mother.



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Heed Him

The bird would just as soon
pluck your eyes out
as send you to the ball.
That’s a pigeon,
feathers the color of car rinse,
rainbow of soap and grime,
wings squeaking with malfunction.
The pigeon is a dirty bird
but cleans you up
handsome as a princess.
If not for the bird, girl,
you’d be searching for faeries
in thistle
princes in frogs.
If not for the bird.
He hands you these:
your gold pumps,
a fancy dress.
But you can’t get dignity
from a pigeon.
You can’t find true love
in a waltz.
The bird knows sisters
must be made to bleed,
castles built on their backs.
The pigeon is no one’s fool.
The pigeon has his reasons.


Leslie F. Miller



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The poem was written as a response to students who failed to find attitude in Sexton's poem, which I find oozes it. Sexton's tone was too subtle for them.

I had hoped, with my version, to make a statement about the use of birds in literature and about the Disney version of this folk tale, which makes it seem as though being a martyr is a worthy enterprise, so long as there's a prince at the end of the tunnel; as though marrying up is the goal; as though love will come along with the riches; as though marrying a complete stranger with social standing should be the goal of a girl's life.

Even if all that is present in the Grimm version of the tale, at least their original version (Charles Perrault's, adapted by Disney, may have been older, but he was a devout Catholic and altered the story to suit his religious values) had the birds plucking out the eyes of the sisters for all their torment of Cinderella. At least the sisters got their due.

I'm not saying that the desire for revenge is a healthy one. But I rather like the typical German folktalke for children, which is overtly violent and instills a bit of fear into kids so that they don't become evil stepsisters. Ugly behavior should not have rewards.