The Hoopoe

The morning is not open to ambush.
Heckled as I go by the dawn chorus
Puffed up strides do little to shake off melancholia’s pursuit.
But I keep walking.

Fragments of nostalgia thrown out in last night’s dreams are recast.
The zoetrope spins fastest in the early hours.
My mind’s eye hazy like the warmth gyrating above the parched grass.

I still remember it all.
English summers, the places I used to go.
Buddleia adorned with swashbuckling butterflies.
Pareidolia stalks me wearing these familiar masks.

This too is summer though, me in the summer.
Looked square in the eye melancholia retreats, almost apologetically.
I sit down for a while.

A sudden streak of brilliance cuts through the haze.
Clarity.
The hoopoe lands on the fringes of the woods,
An unusual caller, a visitor not beholden to specific place or memory.
No baggage Sir?
Summering now as he pleases.

It is not his concern whether this glade has changed.
Perhaps he has not visited before.
A punk rocker in orderly suburbia, confident in self.

Summer and warm.
Uncomplicated by mental bric-a-bric.
To him the detail matters not for the detail cannot go unchanged.

The hoopoe fans its wings energized by the now crackling heat.
Unbothered by summers past.
Unpursued and without hecklers.

I resolve to be glad I saw him and not to worry whether I see him again.