Call Me Weird

Like a black chicken, this Septuagenarian Singer embraces her wyrd and races the wind. (Hint: wyrd is the root of weird but means destiny, NOT fate.)

Ayam Cemani chickens are bred to great fighters and runners. Photo by Michael Anfang on Unsplash

Look! The crackled, speckled egg
over my mixing bowl is spilling
yellow and white rivers
of epiphanies, answered prayers, protection,
and protein.
Chick as sacrificial lamb, that –
like Venus from an opened shell –
I may rise
power packed, angel feathered.

A medium assures me the two rooks
alighting upon my balcony
are indeed Daddy and Uncle Fred.
I toast them – my wine in a juice glass
etched with flowers, a gift
from a Marine-turned-gangbanger-felon
I never once feared.

The only fruit I recruit for service
must be rock-hard, raw.
Just don’t mention the other f-word,
flesh,
or I’ll fret red pears, white peaches, Envy apples –
even the seeds and almonds on my oatmeal –
have souls
whose covetable juiciness
I’d do better to emulate, not consume.

Yes, like an obsidian black chicken –
an Ayam Cemani – I embrace my wyrd.
Bred to fight, to race toward the Light.
To take, eat, drink. To embody. To glisten.
To be.

Many thanks to Medium writer D.L Demeril, who introduced me to the concept of wyrd:

Actually, wyrd, the root of weird, meant fate — your personal destiny. The web of Wyrd is a tapestry of unseen forces, always moving, always weaving. Our destiny rides on how the threads come together. We have influence over what happens, yes, but it’s the interplay of all threads together that shapes what becomes.

I have always prided myself on my vocabulary mastery…but WYRD? Wyrd was new to me. New in meaning. New as a way of living.

For way too many decades, this Septuagenarian Singer allowed “the fickle finger of Fate” – a phrase from the 1930s resurrected by Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In thirty years later – to chart her course. I was flotsam carried on a wave rather than the wave itself.

But now…

Now, at long last, every morning, I muster my wryd. Then, voila – like Vayu, the Hindu god of the Wind in a top hat – I release wryd’s energy.

Mantram*

Trusting fully its magic
Awash in our waltz of liberation
Swirling deliriously yet deliberately
toward this moment’s definition
of joy, even as — like the clouds —
I swell with tears

^{*Mantram means “that which protects and liberates the mind.”}

Years ago, a nurse asked my mother if I was her only child.

“Oh, no, I have a son,” my mother replied. “He’s a saint.” A glance sidewise my way. “She’s strange.”

Yep, Mama. She’s strange.

Stay tuned.

---

I loathe the tech bro’s algorithm and self-promotion even more. Nevertheless, please help me blow the algorithmic winds in my favor by clicking on the little heart and, perhaps, even sharing this piece with others.