Loving yourself is like
feeding a clear bird
no one else can see.

You must be still and offer
your palmful of secrets
like delicate seed.

As she eats your secrets
no longer secret
she glows
and you lighten
and her voice
which only you can hear
is your voice
bereft of plans.

And the light
through her body
will bathe you
till you wonder
why the gems in your palm
were ever fisted.

Others will think you crazed
to wait on something
no one sees.

But the clear bird
only wants to feed
and fly and sing.

She only wants
light in her belly.

And once in a great while
if someone loves you enough
they might see her rise
from the nest
beneath your fear.

by Mark Nepo
This seems to me to be a companion poem to the Bluebird by Charles Bukowski of earlier this month. The metaphor is the same – both speak of a bird in the heart, a beautiful bird that is untouched and sings the truest song of who we are. Yet, for me, the feel of the two poems is different. Bukowski’s one is melancholic, full of pathos. The man, perhaps Bukowski himself, is only relating to the bluebird under cover of darkness and there is a shadow of grief at the edges of the poem. In Nepo’s poem we are being deliberately tutored on how to be in relationship with our bird, it feels hopeful – there is an instruction to follow.

What is the instruction? To feed seed to our ‘clear bird’ heart. To give her life and light through an intentional ongoing relationship of nourishment. It’s striking how the seeds are also gems, gems of precious potential, that we have until now ‘fisted’ – enclosed and hidden from ourselves and the world. Now in the poem, they are being shared and brought to light.

Don’t we all long for this? To open our long-tense fist and find within the life-giving gems of our true selves, so to feed the starved innermost being within? Can we release the burden of shielding our true face from the world – like how in the poem the bird ‘eats your secrets no longer secret’?

I like how, in a commentary on the poem, Nepo describes the heart as ‘the aliveness that lives below all names’. Perhaps we are all on a quest to find the seeds that awaken our aliveness – the mystery and wonder of who we are. In my experience I’m always following a trail of seeds. My heart comes alive here and there, then is quiet a while, then I stumble upon something or remember the way and that aliveness is back, and gradually I’m knowing myself better so that I can follow Nepo’s instructions more faithfully. Knowing my own particular heart enliveners means I can bring in that intentionality. I can seek them out and can give time to them. What are your heart enliveners? Could you devote yourself to them sometimes?

To finish, let me allow Nepo to explain more deeply:

‘Under all our plans and goals and secret desires, the heart only wants to inhabit its aliveness. This is the seed of our deeper self. And whether we get what we want or not, the life-force within us only wants to stream from Source to mouth, the way a river doesn’t really care where it goes or how long it takes for its water to get where it’s going.’