For my father, always as a child,
the morning hour had gold in its mouth —
and so roused of my bed,
hot coffee in his thermos
and hot chocolate in mine,
he’d drive me up Black Mountain,
tell me as we flew the nest,
“Keep your eagle eyes
peeled for the grouse”
speckled in the brush.
I was free as a bird
on that mountain side
the cold dawn on my face
doing ostrich politics
about why, here, now …
there — between us was propped,
his .22 and a box of shells,
and my Dad looked at me as he drove,
a funny bird was I, he often said,
that I wouldn’t shoot the birds.

Post Script: I took my riff, today, from the German idiom “den Vogel abschießen” which literally translates as “shoot the birds” but which would loosely translate in English as “to steal the show” or “to take the cake.”

∞

Submitted as part of “National/Global Poetry Writing Month” (#NaPoWriMo #GloPoWriMo).

Today’s prompt: Day Twenty-Two: Many different cultures have proverbs or phrases that have largely the same meaning, but are expressed in different ways. For example, in English we say “his bark is worse than his bite,” but the same idea in Spanish would be stated as “the lion isn’t as fierce as his painting.” Today, I’d like to challenge you to find an idiomatic phrase from a different language or culture, and use it as the jumping-off point for your poem.