Ignorance

I was woken up in the early morning after my flight, by a sound I could not grasp, I did not recognize. Running like water, two toned, and tangled like a wire, flowing, jangled, many sounds at once. It was a magpie, you told me, as you handed me a coffee, the black and white bird you see in city parks. And you pointed out the window - looking straight in at me - a black and white bird sitting on the fence. I thought about the man who called it a magpie confronted by the great expanse of his ignorance, he wanted to name it, to detain it, forever in that small phrase. It seemed like a shame, to give it a name. But then again, I don't understand anything the way I'm supposed to. I drag every river for meaning, scrape my hand on every ceiling. I never know what to say or not say, what to honour or betray in any given day. But I never got used to the sound of the magpie it set my skin on edge, it called like a child like a dog like the wind caught in a fence. When we talked it interrupted, and I would never know what it meant.