Sugarberry, One Beautiful Albatross

[Congratulations to Ron Horoshko for his runner up entry in our 2010 Creative Contest.]

I asked my friend, Mr. Ron, to sit and have a man to bird, or bird to man conversation. See, I am Sugarberry, a beautiful albatross, if you don’t mind a little boastfulness on my behalf. I am proud of my pedigree, for I was named after my mother’s great grandmother, Wanda Sugarberry Flan. Her husband Sir Winston Flan III was the first of our kind to soar above the mountains of what is now called the Himalayas. He caught an air stream that took him across the Pacific Ocean to the islands, which now are known as Hawaii, and my birthright.

I say right because my mother and father were deeded the land on the island of Kauai. My mother was a genealogist and kept very accurate records, both air plots and land surveys. Mom had this feminist attitude that I was the recipient of and will pass on to my children. My husband, Sir Cedric Wilson, is one strong Albatross, a little overweight in the mid-section and not as romantic as when we first meet. See, there was one time when we were cuddling below a palm tree overlooking the cliffs above the north shore gazing at the grey cloud cover with the sun rays drawing water from the ocean’s white capped swells. Cedric, put his wing around me, drew me so close that I had to bend my wing to protect my breast from his unintentional petting. Yet, on the other wing, I suppose I wanted that moment to turn into the "Mating Dance". If you have not seen us dance, it is an inherited waltz of sorts with a little salsa and merengue mixed in. We once performed this exchange in the quite still of the evening with trade winds cooling the warm body heat as we danced to the music of the evening, as if Andrea Bocelli was performing live "Per Amore".

Now, sad to say, it’s not Cedric’s fault that he can’t get the juices flowing. See, this once peaceful refuge was taken over by landlords, that word lord should be stricken and changed to hordes. They just started digging and building and moving our homes without even giving us notice. I hear they did the same thing to group of Indians on another continent. I guess that’s a lesson in history that just got overlooked. See, before these landhordes, there was a "beautiful people" that loved the land and cared for the land and its inhabitants. They danced and sang songs and played in the ocean. They even made their alphabet with only a few letters, so when they wrote songs and letters it was mo better. Here I go again ragging on something I can’t change. I guess our nesting grounds, someday will be gone. See now we live next to a "natural gas tank" and the only trades we feel are when the air conditioners are running and the air from the inside is blown out of a hole in the wall.

Well, Mr. Ron , I guess I am the chatty one, please forgive me, for my aunties are gone, my family is now just me and Cedric. See for some strange reason I can’t get pregnant, oh well, maybe it’s for the best. We are down in numbers and soon this once proud bird of Hawaii will be gone, not by the way of the wind, but by the way of greed. Mr. Ron, why is greed so important to your people? Don’t they want the refuge of Aloha that we once shared with the beautiful people, the Hawaiians?

Sugarberry, see someday, someone will get it right, hopefully before it’s too late. Sugarberry, "[ T]he greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. Its one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, molding them into money."*

It’s sad... Sugarberry .

*Rabindranath Tagore