The Skirt Bird

A Prose Poem

THE SKIRT. UNEARTHED. YEARS IN HIDING OR STORAGE BUT NOT GONE.

It is a single wing of a bird without direction. A body with three sides and a small heart. An inconsequential thing. A thing with something we all need. This is what I think.

Brocade. That comes next, although it might not seem accurate. A word not random but deserved, given the memory. Of something very elegant and old and noble. A texture, yes, but also a design, rich, regal, all the things I never knew I should want.

*****

This is not a one-sided story, as will be seen. It has no order and no way of being put in order either, but that is of no consequence. The story could turn out to be just black and white, even tough there probably is something more, has to be something more. There are always more than two sides to a story. Mosaics our lives.

Yellow, black, and white skirt. Or maybe it’s meant to be described in some other order, just not constrained by custom like red, white, and blue or pink and blue. This time we could be dealing with black, yellow, white, or white, black, yellow… you get the idea. 

It’s the fact that it is a set of three, and order matters not. Three that tell different stories. Or rather, make us tell them.

*****

The bird flew overhead and left a trail of thoughts, things that should come to mind when a bird flies near us. Birds thoughtfully leaving us color and trying to tell us what they’ve done to reach us and quickly depart, probably without knowing what they leave behind. 

And we humans, scrabbling to catch hold of tail feathers but without hurting, begging for a minute more.

China, 100 or two hundred A. D. saw the birth of brocade, some sources say. Brocade means flowery, like broccoli, some sources say. Probably the word is Latinesque in origin. Byzantium was the inheritor of China’s brocade around 800 A.D. We might not like thinking so far back, because it feels like forever.

*****

How did the fabric come to be a skirt that would never be forgotten? I must have chosen it from fabrics meant for deck pillows or cushions, sturdy, canvas-y. I must have chosen it because yellow was my favorite color. 

How many times did I wear the skirt? That’s a really hard question, because I know I wore it once since there’s a photograph before my eyes that says yes. I want to say more times, but it wouldn’t have been more than three or four. You couldn’t wear a bright cotton skirt year round and the next year you’d outgrown the skirt. It’s been washed, though. I put it in the machine myself.

How old was I? Maybe nine. Maybe ten. Maybe, but not probably, eleven. But eleven is still a possibility. From age eight to twelve I was short and skinny, so it’s hard to pinpoint when.

Anyway, I distinctly recall wearing the skirt and glasses in the photo, so I was at least eight years old when I first wore the skirt because I was eight when I got my first glasses. I also recall the white blouse with a pointy collar, V-neck-looking. I don’t think it had sleeves and don’t think I ever had another white blouse - with or without sleeves - because white doesn’t look good on me at all. However, in this case, it had to be white. Nobody back then wanted to dress children in black, the color of mourning. So black was out. The yellow background was shriekingly impossible to match. Enter white.

Birdskirt. The bird is like the beginning of this story. A skirt flies in and out of one’s memory. It’s hard to catch a glimpse of much: a triangle, blurred colors. I might have this all wrong. My sense of time is unavailable for now.

I tried to find birds that are yellow, black, and white, maybe to match the flitting skirt. This is one thing I came up with: Goldfinch, Grosbeak, Tanager, Warbler, Yellowthroat, Blackbird, Meadowlark. Rather surprising, but then I’m not an expert on birds. I simply think the comparison could prove useful. And who knew a blackbird could have yellow feathers?

Why did the skirt survive? So much from back then didn’t. Less than five percent did. No, less. A box or two. Why did a skirt that would never be worn again and was unlikely to be respected by anybody since it was so out of date make it to its current stop several hundred miles away? Was this going to be the final resting place? Only I can tell its story.

Why is there a painting by a brilliant French painter, Elisabeth Poiret, in Maine? Why are there lemons with black and green ribbons of branches over my dining room table? How did I meet her and what did I learn from her? Why was that so important? Why do her painted lemons match the skirt?

Why is there a white ceramic cat with coal, gold, and emerald adornments stretching along the bookshelf of my house on the Maine coast when I look up from this journal? Why is there a spoon rest next to the stove (behind me) that is painted with maize, azure, and slate designs? 

Who made the quilt on the back of the couch, fully half of it a sunflower gold with a picket fence behind, gleaming and pure? All of these questions are hopeful. Sunflowers and lemons are both very warm and golden.

*****

Yellow wallpaper woman. It’s the phrase I can’t shake off now. Why does Charlotte Perkins Gilman come to mind? I’m not stuck under, I mean in, the yellow papered walls of my sick room. Not stuck anywhere. I am also in very good health. 

Wanted to use it in art. The skirt, I mean. The problem is, I can’t bear to take the scissors to it. Poor fabric, nobody but me gives it a passing glance now. It’s not getting any closer to forming part of a quilt or a stuffed animal.

Even more importantly: poor Mom, making this skirt. I don’t care to think about her right now.

*****

Hang it in my closet. That’s what I’ll do with the skirt for the time being. A heavy metal clip will be necessary, I bet. It’s rather coarse cloth.

Well look at that. There it is, the only skirt I own. Half a century old and hanging in my closet as if it’s been there forever. I don’t dare try it on. Memory says it fits perfectly.

The image of a bird of three colors comes to mind once more. And once again, it’s probably the shape of the skirt, which has tight gathers sewn with precision onto a tight waistband. I do see a bird’s wing rather than a butterfly’s wing. Butterflies are too delicate and this cloth is sturdy.

I wonder how many birds there are with the three colors, then realize I couldn’t identify any of them. 

*****

Hope (yellow)

Reality (death, black)

The Moment (invisible, like air, white)

This was not what the colors meant when I chose the fabric. I don’t remember what I was thinking. I wanted to be creative, though.

*****

All well and good, but I see memory reshaped the design, gave it a French accent. (That must have been the baroque design.) The design was regal, definitely. It had a Dutch air because of its colors (yellow, white), and somehow I knew that, knew it was too regal for any country but France. It had to be baroque, after all: it was elegance made for a pre-adolescent girl with dreams.

And now memory tells untruths, which are not as bad as lies. Because I am now looking at what is probably best termed a semi-modern artifact, the design was not French Baroque and it wasn’t even something similar to Dutch folk art. No, it is this:

A slightly gaudy yellow background with some tulip-like blossoms in white, plus white outlines of flowers with yellow and black centers, plus some random swirly black flowers floating on the yellow background.

I had gotten the colors right, at least.

When had the colors become softer, less garish? When had the design become French, and Baroque? Was it the trips to France and Portugal? Kilometers as artist’s brushes, painting and tinting with aesthetic freedom. Those who prefer realistic art might not understand. Yet the weeks in France had left their mark in my own art and thinking. My writing now is beginning to lean toward certain linden trees in Labarthe-Bleys, or curry pizza on a terrace in Cordes, or a Roman villa at Conímbriga.

Still, this is a completely untenable explanation. The above explanation is either far too obvious or completely erroneous. Or stupid.

If memory serves… 

No! Memory clearly does not want to serve. Memory claims the authority, the right to rework the early in order to keep the adult functioning, working, going forward in life. That reworking might even be continuous. Even people of a very advanced age have a right to renewal. Of ideas, skills, and yes, childhoods. They don’t want to die of boredom and are clearly right in their feeling.

So does one choose elegance or folk art style? Folk art or modern? Can’t I have them all? Even if they are out of chronological order? Even if I can’t tell what’s real and what’s only desired?

Or are they not what I really want? Are they not just designs, marks on a page of fabric, endlessly repeating themselves? Designs of three colors that could have been three different colors or maybe just two.

I think it’s something else:

There are invisible hands - so many hands of that sort are invisible - left behind when the skirt was finished. Hands that rarely read a book but that still knew how to put every stitch by hand or machine in its proper place. The skirt, maybe, had been a way for me to show off. I thought that when I wore it I would attract attention and then I could show off my mother’s skills for making clothing. (Note: I was so proud of what she could do with her hands that sometimes I forgot to be proud of her kindness.)

Hands that never hurt anything, had homely, flat nails and prayed in secret. That worked long hours to show their brilliance because the brain was not overly equipped. The only hands that have ever loved me, even when sewing, cooking, or taking the minutes for a VFW meeting.

I am trying to bring them, bring her, her back, to finish my beautiful skirt, garish or elegant baroque silk, to put just one more perfect stitch in the waistband or hem. A stitch that would last a year or ten or until we are both standing by the dining room table where the Singer is. I am pirouetting around the table, a ballerina in yellow, black, and white.

I need to pirouette now, in fact.