Birdie

Birdie with a yellow bill, hopped upon my window sill

The birdie with a yellow bill I saw just now hopped . . . upon the branch of a chestnut tree, and chirped away looking for a mate as the wind ruffled his feathers and the leaves around him.

Inside, on my window sill, a lion with a curly mane has taken up residence. He watches as I move through the room. What, I wonder, is he thinking?

Apparently my lion is quite alone. He’s made of wood and yet he contains a soul, that of his maker, Gualverio Michelangeli, who smiles to himself as he fashions you.  Other lions, a menagerie of creatures, roam around in my head. Some are real, the creations of my fantasy, and others took shape in other minds, to emigrate into mine.

Feline companions for my lion with a curly mane abound, but they are mostly tigers. There are the four who chased Sambo around a tree until they, the tigers, turned into ghee, melted butter, to be eaten with pancakes.  The feline closest to my heart is Tigger, obviously a tiger and not a lion, and anything but ferocious. Together with Pooh and Eeyore and Piglet, he’s the brainchild of A.A. Milne. There are other authors who created menageries, perhaps with rabbit families like Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit, or with other anthropomorphized creatures like those brought to life by Kenneth Grahame in the Wind in the Willows.  But they are all somehow domestic whereas in Kipling’s timeless menagerie we learn how the elephant got his trunk or how the zebra got his stripes. His animals are wild creatures from the jungles of India, where there were no lions, but not from Africa where, since there were no lions, none appear in his stories. The closest Kipling comes is a cat – albeit it was a cat that walked alone with whom I feel akin.

Even so the world of fantasy is full of lions. From Aesop and his tale of the mouse that removed a thorn from the lion’s paw to the many represented in Greek and Roman sculpture. And of course the Romanesque lions guarding church entrances.  And how about the real lions the Medici kept in a street outside Palazzo Vecchio in Florence?

Birdie with a yellow bill. I can’t but help thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson and A Child’s Garden of Verses. I see myself as a small child snuggling under the covers as the sun tells me it is time to rise. It was only later that A.A. Milne gave us his world with Christopher Robin and his beloved cohorts.

So, lion on my window sill.  What are you looking at, what are you thinking?

You do seem to be observing me as I sit at my computer, or as I move from here to there. There’s an array of objects that keeps you company but you probably couldn’t care less. There’s a deep purple primula, a twig of purple lilac in a vase we never gave much thought to but now are glad we have. There’s an iron wafer press perhaps used by nuns to make hosts for the mass. Although the signs of the zodiac engraved in a circle don’t seem to have all that much to do with nuns. But who knows, in the Renaissance the zodiac as well as the stories of the Bible were popular subjects for patrons and their artists. They seem really to have believed in what the stars had to tell them.  

So, lion of my lions, thanks to you, Gualverio now keeps company with Kipling’s cat and A.A. Milne’s Pooh and Piglet.  The birdie with a yellow bill has found a home of sorts in my head, as have you, Gualverio, a good wizard, adroit in building dreams, fragments of sun and joy.

And I know, lion on my window sill, that you can see the shades of all those who lived here in years gone by. From the cantankerous old man who designed this house, to the students who were misled into thinking he was a genius. That old man surely would have laughed at Winnie the Pooh as a childish invention. But it is Tigger and the birdie with a yellow bill who bring a smile to my lips.  They are what I most remember. Just as I am grateful, lion on my window sill, to the man who made you.

You follow me as I maneuver my way, supported by a walker, to the window from which I will later see the moon. When I turn the corner, I am out of sight. Do you wait for me to return? Or am I part of you now, just like Sambo being chased around a tree, or the birdie alighting outside my window?

Lion, with your great curly mane, the sky has darkened, our memories gradually fade away, as raindrops fall silently outside. Yet you surely remember when you served as a lookout post for a sleek black cat hoping to sight some birds before jumping down for breakfast.

Life goes on around you as you sit there waiting, keeping memories alive.

We too sit silently waiting, wondering, as memories keep parading through our heads.