The Bird Called Inspiration

Once a man had been sitting, just day dreaming in his garden, in the sun when he saw a fabulous bird with feathers that glowed bright colours; orange and red feathers like fire and blue feathers like the summer sky at its brightest and green feathers like pieces of jade with the sun shining through them.

At first the man thought he must be dreaming the bird and he rubbed his eyes and shook himself to make sure that he was thoroughly awake before looking again but the bird was still there in the branch of a tree and glowing as brightly as before and now the man noticed more colours; feathers that were pink like sunset and purple like twilight and gold like the morning sun.

“What a fabulous bird you are”, he said to himself, “A really fabulous bird”.

But then the bird began to sing and that was a wonder just as bright as its feathers, for when it sung, strings and stars of golden light came shooting out of its mouth, dancing like fireflies, whizzing like fireworks and whirling like embroidered patterns of golden thread.

“I’ve never seen such a bird before”, said the man, “I have to show you to everyone or they’ll never believe you exist”.

And so he went inside his house and got a huge butterfly net which he threw over the bird as it was sitting happily and peacefully on its branch and then, grabbing hold of the bird as it was struggling to escape the net, he took it inside and locked it in a cage.

It was just an ordinary wire cage but then, with the bird locked up, he went out and bought one made of golden wire and studded with jewels which he thought would complement the bird’s bright colours and its shimmering song.

Then, with the bird locked up inside the new cage, he telephoned all of his friends and invited them to come and look at the bird.

“It really is the most amazing thing you’ll ever see”, he told them, sounding breathless with excitement.

Then, he waited and, one by one his friends turned up and he seated them all in his living room with cups of tea and biscuits and they all looked, with anticipation at the birdcage in the centre of the room over which he had hung a shiny satin bird cage cover embroidered with pictures of tropical birds.

And then, just like a man at a carnival displaying some fabulous attraction, he waited until they were all ready before quickly whipping away the bird cage cover, a huge grin of pride upon his face.

But the cage was empty.

His friends started to snigger,

“I can’t see anything”, said one, “Are you sure it hasn’t escaped?”.

The man checked all of the bars of the cage but they were as solid and straight as they had been before and the lock on the cage was shut tight.

“No”, he said, “It can’t have gotten free, I don’t know what could have happened but you should have seen it. Its feathers glowed, they really glowed just like jewels on a crown and when it sang golden strings and stars came shooting from its mouth”.

“Perhaps you just imagined it”, said another of his friends, “You said you were day dreaming when you saw it. Perhaps it was just a daydream”.

This made the man angry because he remembered how hard he had wrestled to get the bird from the net into the cage; feathers going up his nose and claws scratching him.

“No, no, you’re wrong”, he said, “It was real. You’ve got to believe me”.

But then his friends all started to yawn and look at their watches, saying that they had busy lives and other things that they had to do.

“It’s a nice bird cage anyway”, said one, being polite as she made her way to the door of his house, “It’ll look even better when there’s a bird in it”.

Then the last of his friends left his house and, sulkily, he slammed the door behind them.

“Where did you go?”, he said to the empty cage, fiddling with the tiny golden key in the lock that kept it shut, “I can’t understand how you got out”.

He opened the cage door to look inside, just in case the bird was hiding, curled up, in one of its corners.

Suddenly, the bird shot out, leaping like fire from the mouth of a cannon and then it started fluttering wildly round the room looking for an exit.

“So you were inside the cage”, said the man, startled but pleased to see the bird again, “Where did you go; why didn’t you glow and sing like you did in my garden?”.

“I glow when I’m happy. I sing when I’m free”, said the bird, “I will not do them at your command. If you want to see me glow and hear me sing, you must let me be free”.

And so the man opened his window and let the bird go, saying that he would never try to trap it or keep it a prisoner again.

And he wondered, as he saw the bird with all its coloured feathers as bright as a carnival, fly away into the grey sky whether he would ever see it again.

But then, about a month later, the bird came back into his garden and kept coming back and sitting in his tree and glowing and singing as it had that first day and all of his friends, when they came to visit, saw it too but it only came when it wanted to, he couldn’t force it or entice it to come.

And he called the bird “Inspiration” because, like inspiration, if you wanted it to come to you, you had to let it be free.