The Soul Bird

Soul Bird
~ Michal Snunit~

Deep down,
inside our bodies,
lives the soul.
No one has ever seen it,
but we all know it's there.
Not only do we know it's there,
we know what's in it, too.

Inside the soul,
right in the very middle of it,
there is a bird standing on one foot.
This is the soul bird.
It feels everything we feel.

When someone hurts our feelings,
the soul bird runs round and round in pain

When someone loves us,
it hops and skips
up and down
backwards and forwards

When someone calls our name,
it listens carefully
to hear what kind of call it is.

When someone is angry with us,
it curls itself into a ball
and is silent and sad.

 

And when someone hugs us,
the soul bird, deep down inside,
grows and grows
until it almost fills us.
That's how good it feels when someone hugs us

Deep down, inside, lives the soul.
No one has ever seen it,
but we all know it's there.
Never, never has a person been born..
who didn't have a soul.
It sparks the moment we are born
and never leaves us-
not even once-
for as long as we live.
It's like the air that people breathe
from the moment they are born
until the time they die.

-Do you want to know what the soul bird is made of?
Well, it's really quite simple:
it's made of drawers.
These drawers can't be opened just like that-
because each is locked with its own special key!
Only the soul bird can open its drawers.
How?

Ah, that's quite simple too:
with its other foot.

-The soul bird stands one one foot,
and with its other foot..
(tucked under its wing when it's resting)
it turns the key to the drawer it wants to open,
pulls the handle, and lets everything inside- out!

-Because there is a drawer for everything we feel,
the soul bird has many, many drawers:
one for being happy and one for being sad;
one for being jealous and one for being content;
one for being hopeful and one for being hopeless;
one for being patient and one for being impatient.
There is also one for hating and for being loved.
There is even a drawer for being lazy and one for being vain.
And there is a special drawer for your deepest secret -
which is hardly ever opened.
There are other drawers too -
whatever drawers you dream of.

Sometimes you can tell the bird..
which keys to turn and which drawers to open.
Sometimes the bird will choose especially for you.
Like, when you want to be silent
and order the soul bird to open the silence drawers.

But the bird decides all by itself
to open the talking drawer
and you talk and talk
without even wanting to.

You want to listen patiently,
but the soul bird opens his impatience drawer
and you become impatient.

Sometimes you get jealous without meaning to.
And sometimes you get in the way when you only want to help.
The soul bird does not always do what it is told
and gets things in a mess.

By now you've understood that everyone is different
because there's a difference soul bird deep inside.
The bird opens the happiness drawer each day
pours happiness into your body
and you will be happy.

But if the bird opens the anger drawer
he will be angry
until the bird closes the drawer behind him.

A bird who feels bad
will open up the drawers
which make you feel bad.

A bird who feels good
will open up the drawers
which make you feel good.

Most important is to listen to the soul bird,
because sometimes it calls us and we don't hear it.
This is a shame- it wants to tell us about ourselves.
It wants to tell us about the feelings
that are locked up inside its drawers.

Some of us hear it all the time.
Some almost never.
And some of us hear it
only once in a lifetime.

That's why it'a good idea -
maybe late at night when everything is quiet -
to listen to the soul bird
deep down inside us.