Bird of Paradise

by Christian Cacibauda

for Anna-Maria Loomes (1989-2020)

                        There is a cliff, whose high and bending head

                        Looks fearfully in the confinèd deep.

                        Bring me but to the very brim of it,

                        And I’ll repair the misery thou dost bear

                        With something rich about me. From that place

                        I shall no leading need.

                                          —Shakespeare. King Lear. IV. i. 83-88

Sweep what I recall of her together,

      and it makes a pretty paltry ghost—

perhaps since others knew her better.

      But my retention, worse than most,

unearths an Amazon of tawny skin

      tattooed at tricep (peacock feather),

shoulder blades (a blurry yant paet-thit),

      and dressed eternally for summer weather:

those cutoff shorts, that muscle shirt—

      absurdly day-glo orange—the strappy sandals

(never hosiery; no socks or purse),

      and beaded whipcord at her wrists and ankles.

Revive that frame, and turn it loose,

      you might catch up again a decade later—

if not in Cuba, Spain, or Laos,

      then just a few points off her wild equator

(she’d got as far, on austral jaunts,

      as Mission Beach, where she’d gone parachuting);

or six feet down, off Sibuan,

      befriending angelfish; or else canoing,

home in Kent, the Greater Stour.

      Surprising, then, that posthumous adventures

should land her here: Unhappy Hour—

      my Wednesday whisky haunt—in bleak December.

Still I make her at the bar—a neon wight

      whose grinning limns the Stygian brass and leather.

She looks my way, from two seats right,

      so sprightly in her mien, I half expect her

to greet me with the nom de guerre she’d made

      by punning, in that cadence of a cuckoo,

about my HPV and family name:

      Oi-OI! Are you still riddled, Catch-a-boo-boo?

“Cremation clear your ringworm up?” I ask,

      bracing for swats in mock retaliation—

but all I get’s the grin (a mask),

      and changing tack, I offer up libations,

coughing to draw the Barman close,

      whose standard midnight query (“What’s your poison?”)

now rings so apt for me, it tolls.

      Still riddled? Yes indeed, and that’s the question.

I quail briefly, then dart my eyes

      at Robert Burns, a single from the Islands.

“A double, neat, for auld lang syne,”

      I say. The Man complies, retreats in silence.

“Was it that doggerel I read

      at open mic, about the window jumper,

that blackly plumed your beachy head?

      Don’t tell me my sad verses put you under?”

You utter knob! Her parents ill,

      her brother dead, all public fun forbidden

(save riots) that year the earth stood still,

      and all but one flight grounded out of Britain—

“Sometimes,” I say, “I catch your drift.

      Some nights I’ll leash the Barghest up, meander

down the land to chalky cliffs,

      and pause at ledges looming over water—

pick up that Thing, that hard black Gem,

      and watch my heartbeat flicker in the facets.

But still, I put it down again,

      get back to work, put on a winter jacket.

So why not you? Something to do

      (I heard) with dashed romance, bad faith, affections

ill-returned? Well, others, too,

      got burned the same, and lived with their rejections.”

But all these barbs fall wide. The sphynx

      beside me goes on grinning, coyly tosses

her auburn-chesnut tresses, blinks—

      but doesn’t breathe a word about her losses.

I bolt the drink. And next, to soothe

      the burn of Burns, I order up a vodka

martini: Gallo dry vermouth

      atop a cleanish, Polish base of Kavka.

The Barman, in a louche volte-face,

      surveys his columbaria of spirits

arranged along the backbar glass,

      retrieves the two I’ve just requested (nearest

my boon companion), shaker, ice,

      combines all four with acrobatic flourish,

then strains to stemware with a slice

      of lime and doubled olives for a garnish.

“You know,” I say, “I once believed

      that you and I’d have made a decent pairing.”

Who knows? Would I still be bereaved

      if I had hit on her with greater daring?

If on that that camping overnight—

      a decade past—the Bukmyeon’s southern sandbar,

bikinis, booze, our expat tribe

      deranged with drink and heat beneath the Dog Star—

if after she and I had had risked

      a swim on floats across that murky water

to sun ourselves on granite cliffs,

      played grabass in the shallows—where I got her

Brazilians off (but gave them back),

      and after she’d gone swatting at mosquitos,

swung wide, and dealt my jaw a crack,

      if as we lolled that night with canned mojitos

beside a drift- and scrapwood fire,

      I’d struck the spark of some equivocal liason,

might that have somehow doused her pyre,

      or pushed it to a farther-flung horizon?

What then? Would we have joined the whirl

      of other lovers on ancestral currents

(as later, with a Russian girl,

      I traced the old Banana Pancake Circuit)

and made it work, despite our flaws—

      the pair-bond tempered by the press of airports,

seaports, immigration laws,

      the constant stress of love on rival passports?

Or would the pressure just have cracked

      our eggshell-brittle, nomad-cohab rapture

and sent us off on separate tracks,

      unsettled still, but strengthened from the fracture,

and bound to reunite sometime

      (if not to re-ignite), compare our spouses,

our kids and compact cars—and whine

      about the interest rates on starter houses?

“Well, what say you?” I ask, but here

      the whole pathetic fantasy collapses—

with six unpeopled gothic chairs, 

      the burlwood bar, and rows of empty glasses

resolving into shape again—

      the Barman, too, who now, obscenely leering

(all hollow eyes and rictus grin),

      has set out Cuervo shots by way of cheering.

Oh well, I guess. Nice knowing you.

      What else is left? The dead, with their elisions,

have told us all they’re going to,

      as sure as she—with one distraught decision—

alighted on those foreign shores

      that heave back only echoes—never swimmers.

Too maladroit, that metaphor.

      It’s not as if she crossed some mythic river

to land, complete, on life’s far bank,

      so much as that she swam a third the distance,

cut her lifelines loose, and sank— 

      resigned to living on in mere remembrance.

And that’s enough. My hand’s mid-air,

      head clear—despite the vodka, wine, and whisky.

I dump the shot, push back the chair,

      and settle up, unwalleting a fifty.

I hope there is a paradise

      the other side of this unhappy valley.

I hope she’s there, the weather’s nice,

      the scenery like Málaga or Bali, 

and understand why one might heed

      the ageless Barman’s call to drown all sorrow—

but I’ve got bills to pay, and kids to feed

      tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow;

—Beijing, PRC. September 20th, 2020—San José, Costa Rica. August 17th, 2025

BIO: Christian Cacibauda is an itinerant poet and writer. A native of Reno, he was educated there at the University of Nevada, and at the Universidad del País Vasco, San Sebastián, Spain. His work has appeared in Plainsongs, Mantis, and Two-Thirds North. He lives in Hillsdale, Michigan.