Found gifts

I was walking to storytelling the other day when I found a piece of paper folded up on the ground. I am a curious person (both meanings apply, but in this case I mean I am infused with curiosity). I picked it up and found a poem by a poet I had never read before. Oh, what a gift!

The Man Who Swallowed a Bird

David P. Young

Happened when he was yawning.

A black or scarlet bird went down his throat

And disappeared, and at the time

He only looked foolish, belched a feather;

The change took time.

But when we saw him again in the

Half-dusk of a summer evening

He was a different man. His eyes

Glittered and his brown hands

Lived in the air like swallows;

Knowledge of season lit his face

But he seemed restless. What he said

Almost made sense, but from a distance:

          Once I swallowed a bird.

          Felt like a cage at first, but now

           Sometimes my flesh flutters and I think

          I could go mad for joy.

In the fall he vanished. South

Some said, others said dead. Jokes

About metamorphosis were made. Nonetheless

Some of us hear odd songs.

                                           Suppose

You press your ear against the morning air,

Above and on your left you might

Hear music that implies without a word

A world where a man can absorb a bird.