Magpies

Here's one of only a handful of poems I wrote between the ages of 20 and 30 (when I was otherwise engaged in the poetic art of survival). It's a prose poem, written before I knew what a prose poem really was, and I present it now, some 15 years later, because of an renewed interest in the archetypal images of Kundalini awakening it draws upon, at a time when the effects of that awakening are still being worked through with a heightened sense of wonder, awe and hope in the mysterious processes involved. Hope you enjoy it:


A thousand magpies were sent up from the earth and broke her crust and dispersed. And one broken winged magpie flew on a crow's back to a house where a girl received it and cooked it and ate it. She ate it and fell ill and saw, that night, in her delirium, the vision of a thousand magpies launched into the world.

And one magpie flew to a river rock where it absorbed the sound of the water’s roar and carried it, in its throat, to the sea. Returning to the rock, returning the water’s roar, the magpie was drowned by a sudden surge of the indignant swell.

The dead bird floated downstream until it was washed up on a bank where a boy fished. Instantly, four crows came from the four corners and lifted the magpie in their wings and flew off, returning the bird to the fountain of the girl's dream, where she received it and held it and transformed it into a thousand living bluebirds.