Birds in their ‘Little Suede Shoes’

Little Suede Shoes, music 
by Charlie Parker
words by Mike Barrett
(click title for PDF)

Birds follow silk road to Buddah
Birds sing in the corn to Ruth
Birds fly in from Kansas City 
Blowing Improvisational truth

As Kingfishers catch fire
Red hawks ride thermal loops
My earthbound soul is lifted up
when sharing their airy grooves

I hear em in the twilight
hear em when it’s dawn
see them on the grassy dew
I often feel a mournful beauty
when they spin out their tunes

Birds are handy prophets
they bring beatniks the news
when chickadees dance on branches
they’re nimble in little 
     suede shoes

Birds make charming tricksters
calculating like the crows
they nick and stick, then 
     disappear
into their inscrutable moods

In Aristophanes’s Greek play
birds outwit mighty Zeus
when poets are out of ideas
they seek out a feathery muse

I hear em in the twilight
hear em when it’s dawn
see them on the grassy dew
I often feel a mournful beauty
when they spin out their tunes

Hail to thee blithe spirit
bird I never knew
are you vision or waking dream
making transcendental blues?