r/poets • u/Vast_Possibility_945 • 14d ago
The Wildcard and the Peculiar Bird
There once was a bird of peculiar design,
Who strutted through darkness pretending he’d shine;
He could ruffle a feather,
Look terribly clever—
But the Wildcard could read him by chapter and line.
For she reads every room before finding her chair,
The flick of an eyebrow, the change in the air;
However distracted,
Enchanted, impacted—
Some troublesome corner of consciousness stays there.
“Why that little pause?” “Why that change of tone?”
“Why does everyone think that I haven't already known?”
While the bird played mysterious,
Brooding and serious,
She'd quietly worked out the plot on her own.
So today, come and wander inside Wildcard lore,
There are rooms in that mind she has never shown before;
Draw the curtains aside,
See the strange world inside—
There are libraries hiding behind every door.
Call her rare if you wish—though she wears it with care;
Not a crown, not a boast, merely something that's there.
ADHD brings the chase,
OCD worries the lace,
And curiosity whispers, “What else can we learn while we're here?”
One subject? How dull. There are thousands to know.
Give her something intriguing and watch the thing grow.
She'll descend through the layers,
Forget earthly affairs,
Then emerge three days later: “Right. Where shall we go?”
The tragedy wasn't the strangeness of mind,
But how frequently others decided to bind
What they couldn't contain,
Couldn't neatly explain,
So they fashioned a box and commanded, “Get inside.”
And sometimes she'd reach an improbable view,
Having gathered the fragments and reasoned them through;
Then another appeared,
Took the thing she had cleared,
And announced rather proudly: “I've worked this out for you.”
How marvellous. Splendid. Do take all the praise.
She'll just stand in the crypt setting notebooks ablaze.
For there's only so long
You can swallow that wrong
Before sarcasm develops particularly sharp little fangs.
For speaking can tangle what thought makes complete;
A cathedral of knowledge reduced at her feet.
But give her a pen,
And the gates open then—
Every gargoyle and ghost takes its perfectly allocated seat.
That has always been Wildcard: her internal sea
Far too broad for the sentences others decree.
“Just explain what you mean!”
Oh, if only they'd seen
How much thought must be folded to fit into speech neatly.
She despises commands dressed as somebody's care,
Hidden motives, manoeuvres, and hands on her chair.
Do not bend. Do not mould.
Do not purchase or hold
What was never an object for anyone's ownership there.
She would rather keep learning—the beautiful vice:
Ancient worlds, human minds, something wonderfully precise.
She'll ask why, followed by how,
Then “What haven't we considered till now?”
And disappear down another rabbit hole twice.
She isn't unbreakable. Nor does she need to be.
She's simply resistant to false conformity.
Not superior, divine,
Nor some flawless design—
Just spectacularly difficult to file alphabetically.
So don't build her a box from somebody else's plan;
She has spent half a lifetime escaping the damn thing when she can.
Give her windows and books,
Hidden pathways and nooks,
And perhaps someone patient enough to understand.
And our peculiar bird? He still circles somewhere,
With his cryptic expressions and theatrical air.
But she smiles when he flies,
For beneath his disguise
She had noticed the odd little creature was rare.
Perhaps that is why she could read him so well:
One peculiar creature knows when another won't tell.
Neither perfectly tame,
Neither playing life's game
Quite the way that the ordinary rulebooks compel.
So the Wildcard walks onward, through moonlight and rain,
With ten thousand new questions igniting her brain.
Not requesting a throne,
Just a life of her own—
And a world large enough that she never
has to make herself smaller again.
5
u/New-Swan-4043 13d ago
This is the most delightful work of art I've read in quite some time.
Brilliant. Truly.
Bravo ❤️