With his spurs he scores the walls and floors. I leap the grooves as I move about the house, dodging his bulk. He's grown huge and suffocating, grown out of that hand-cupped little nestling I loved.
His cry would shiver my house to bits, like an egg, but he no longer crows, just wheezes a broody little cluckle. His very voice makes my neighbour scream... but then again, she hasn't been right in the head since her little ones were stolen by the fair folk.
~
Autumn comes, as russet and bright as his plumage. My own little egg of a babe comes to me as a surprise from the Midsummer rites, the only time of year when I can leave Cock Rubin.
~
Winter now, but there's warmth, the new, nestling warmth of a little baby. My slippery white babe twists and squirms happily in the water of a shining tin bath.
Cold in the draughty fastness of the cottage ceiling, Cock Rubin's icy eye tips toward us, in his cocked, balancing head.
Quick and flashing as a falling topaz, he follows his own jealous gaze down; drops and seizes her in his beak.
~
I follow, too, and with Cold Steel, I carve through his red feathers into flesh.
Right into his stony guts, where I find her, pale and soft, in a charnel heap of grinding gizzard stones and the bones of other fairy-stolen babes.
His cry would shiver my house to bits, like an egg, but he no longer crows, just wheezes a broody little cluckle. His very voice makes my neighbour scream... but then again, she hasn't been right in the head since her little ones were stolen by the fair folk.
~
Autumn comes, as russet and bright as his plumage. My own little egg of a babe comes to me as a surprise from the Midsummer rites, the only time of year when I can leave Cock Rubin.
~
Winter now, but there's warmth, the new, nestling warmth of a little baby. My slippery white babe twists and squirms happily in the water of a shining tin bath.
Cold in the draughty fastness of the cottage ceiling, Cock Rubin's icy eye tips toward us, in his cocked, balancing head.
Quick and flashing as a falling topaz, he follows his own jealous gaze down; drops and seizes her in his beak.
~
I follow, too, and with Cold Steel, I carve through his red feathers into flesh.
Right into his stony guts, where I find her, pale and soft, in a charnel heap of grinding gizzard stones and the bones of other fairy-stolen babes.
