The Decoy Bird

This was created in basic narrative form at a storytelling workshop at Towersey Festival led by the brilliant Debs Newbold and refined into a poem later. I've recently been reading Charles Causley and there are some nods to him in here too.

The Decoy Bird

Soldiers were coming - from the West
Nowhere had we to hide
except an oak tree or a ditch
there was no time to decide.
The leafy tree grew high and broad
so we began to climb
when a bird appeared, so very strange,
with plumage so sublime.

It shimmered blue, its crest was green;
night black its pointed beak;
it opened up its golden wings
and then began to speak:
"This tree not safe, come not in here,
your steps you must retrace!"
and so the dank foul smelling trench
became our hiding place.

The soldiers came, their crunching boots
stopped by the old oak tree;
We thought that they must surely find
my cousin Jack and me.
When suddenly a shout rang out
and then a gunshot too;
I saw when glancing at the sky
a flash of glistening blue.

The bird was dead, the soldiers laughed
and carried it away
But what they saw was not so strange
on that enchanted day;
They just saw a plain game bird
not sparkling in the sun
They left our land, we left the dyke
and to our home did run.

Years passed by but I ne'er forgot
the exquisite Decoy Bird
who saved our lives and died for us
yet we never said a word.
And now I'm old, my time is up
I wait to breathe my last
My mind is filled with memories
of my forgotten past...

An image flashed across my sight
from when I was a child
A fallen bird on the garden path -
my tired old face just smiled
I'd put that bird back in its nest
though I could not have seen
Its blackened beak, its aurate wings;
its crest of radiant green

I closed my eyes one final time
one crowning shallow breath
The long hid mystery was now solved
so thus I met with death.
But as my soul rose to the sky
I saw my golden wings
I opened up my jet-dark beak
and I began to sing.

"At last my story can be heard
for I'm the angelic Decoy Bird."

(c) Tim Fellows 2017