Draw a Bird Day: Hoopoe

I Ask the Hoopoe Three Questions

In my dreams I am always traveling: as Joni says, “looking for something, what can it be?”  My home is the stairway down to the subway, up to the train platform, watching the landscape moving beside the bus.

Here I am again, on the road…in the median I see the bird—huge, red crested, black and white striped wings. I step off the highway into the lush green.

Hoopoe is both real and mythical.  It is associated with death, war, and disease, but also with purity, virtue and leadership. Sometimes it is a messenger between heaven and earth.

I like best the hoopoe in the Sufi story-poem, “The Conference of the Birds”.

What did you
find at the end of
your journey?
Dark and light
intermingling inside your
eye?  Do you know Crow?

I really did have this dream, and spent a few days online looking for the bird.  I knew the hoopoe from the Sufi story, but I don’t think I knew what it really looked like.  It’s a beauty!  dVerse also had a prompt earlier in the week about hometowns, which was the starting point for my haibun .

You can read about “The Conference of the Birds” here.  And I highly recommend Peter Sis’ beautifully illustrated version of it, which you can read about here.

And any excuse for some Joni Mitchell (I was at this concert).

Happy Draw-a Bird Day!