6 posts tagged “birds”
I have become reconciled to Spring. Even though it puts the soft chills of Autumn and Winter to flight, I do not resent that pastel-colored season. If Summer is a lazy voluptuous woman, immobile in her thick and fragrant bower, then Spring is blithe and slim: as changeable as sunlight under water, breaking into watery prisms, impossible to count.
Spring is busy. Nature's offspring are born during that verdant time, when the earth becomes lush again and the air is blue and spinning.
During these months, birds become loud, reckless and bold. Where I live, real estate is at a minimum, and the days are strident with their arguments. Gables, street signs, garages, rooftops - all are populated with perfect creatures that maneuver through the air with a mathematical ascendancy.
Their songs pierce the sunlight until the golden fabric becomes a pattern of their febrile joy.
When I walk to work, I always pass by a row of decorative shrubs: prickly, tropical and dense. Once, I heard in their sultry depths the plaintive pwee-pwee of a newborn bird - too childish to realize the danger of its voice. I stopped, hoping I could discern where the nest was. It was then that I saw a peculiar machine perched on top of the shrubbery. It was a mockingbird, rising its wings up and down like an automaton, a heraldic toy.
It was trying to make itself as intimidating as possible. But despite this whimsical masquerade, I moved closer. It was the sight of its needle-like beak, ready to embroider the skin of any intruder, that finally gave me pause. I spoke a few calming words, all the while waiting for the gasp of wings: the impatient breath in my ear should I not be retreating quickly enough.
I have often thought about the words I spoke to that angry parent. Mockingbirds are famous mimics, and I imagined this bird measuring my voice, analyzing its tonal equations. And I hope to hear it again one day, coming back from its green, concealed places or floating down to me from the sky.
Decades ago, carcasses rode high. Perched, poised and stuffed, they were trapped beneath silk netting and created a coy diorama above the ladies' hats, the large hats, the fearsome hats.
Birds, glass-eyed and full of straw, were arranged by diabolical milliners into a frozen mockery of flight - no longer enticed by the breezes that curled and tickled.
Feathers were pinned to the monstrous brims that hid the ladies from a sky grown increasingly empty and silent. Torn from back and wings, plucked from breasts and tails, they were anchored by jewels: copper-veined turquoise, milky jade, rubies that fumed like dragons' eyes. The feathers were no longer warm with nature's delicate tints; they were dyed in shameless, brazen colors, wrapped around a prostitute's beckoning finger.
But time has passed, and since then birds have flown before the reach of fashion's degradation. They look back from the safety of a less profligate world to one of dissolute plundering, when bodies fell from the sky in a black rain.
The ones I saw wouldn't be so bold if their chaste plumage was still sought in the cause of dishonored decoration:
They probably have no recollection of their ancestors, pinned like halted butterflies; inert ships sailing above the heads of their mistresses. Their DNA is crowded with migratory itineraries, flight maps, astronomical charts, longitudes and latitudes traced across an unknowable planet - no doubt there is little room for any remorse for those whose travels were arrested so long ago.
When I was walking home, I saw a curious thing rolling towards me. It was small and light; it was blown across the sidewalk like a bite of tumbleweed. Or it could have been spools of dust drummed up from earth by a confused wind - bursting into confused shapes as it bounced off the sidewalk.
I walked towards it - it was momentarily still, shaking and weary in the indeterminate breeze. I looked closely. It was a bird's nest. Made of countless threads of dried grass and stripped twigs, it was a woven home, a knit of natural things, gently made through the diligence of two sparrows. Little bursts of life, with songs of boldness and pride, they built their nests every Spring, following the commands of the DNA coursing through their veins.
And now the results of one couple's homemaking lay at my feet. The nest was the color of dried flax, and it was the size of a cupped hand. The middle was hollowed out and lined with pale, winsome feathers. Down, plume, semiplume: the parents had dug deep into their breasts to tear out a cushion of warmth that would complete a bed destined to protect a chorus of helpless lives.
Once part of a sparrow commune hidden in the shadowy, airless eaves of the welcoming houses, an errant wind had lifted it from its moorings like Dorothy's prairie home, and taken it for a ride of confusion on the airy columns, streams and currents. Only instead of stopping to crush a witch, it stopped in front of me.
I was walking back to work, from the bank - congratulating myself that my purse hadn't been stolen (I held on to it, white-knuckled, all the way back).
At one point I passed a type of box hedge, dull and olive - its flat, sheared top just reaching to my shoulders. In its interior there was a lot of activity: I saw the leaves vibrate; I heard delicate rustles as the tiny inhabitants jumped from branch to branch. There were groups of twitterings rising to the surface and breaking free, the notes taking their place in the sky as if it was an endless, blue lyric sheet.
I really didn't understand anything that was being said, but surely the discussion was an excitable one.
Suddenly, pop!
From the top of the hedge there sprouted a flower. It had wings. It grew with quick, nervous movements. It had a beak which had once freed it of its childhood home, when its petals were still curled and weak. Its roots were not visible, twisted tightly around one of the branches which formed the dark labyrinth within.
Then: Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! Four more appeared - an entire featheration of flowers. They spun on their stationary stalks with sharp, little turns: like the tiny ballerina dancing inside of a music box.
This garden, alive, breathing, driven by rapid flickering hearts, was growing only a foot or two away from me. But not a single blossom took its floating flight. They were in constant rotation: maybe they were looking for the sun, and were having trouble finding its warm reassurance on such a cluttered, dirty afternoon.
I walked away smiling. If I had dared to pick them, what a charming bouquet they would have made.
I'll begin by saying that we have moved to a new work place. Still in a residential district. Still in an apartment building: only bigger, loftier. We have a balcony. A bathroom in lavender tile. A stove ca. 1940, all gloss and chrome and dials. A towel rack in the kitchen that folds into the wall and then extends like a malnourished, wooden arm. There is a tiny opening by the front door: open it and there is a chart, reading, 'Buttermilk/Regular/Butter/Cottage Cheese'. The lady of the house, no doubt in a pale narrow house dress, curtained by a linen apron with her hair tied up Tillie The Toiler-style, would move an arrow to indicate the item needed. The milkman would then leave the desired product...and she could retrieve it from the stairwell inside. This dairy cubicle opens inwards.
Our building resides permanently in the shade. Living threads of lime-green lichen permeate the sidewalk, giving it a chilly, neon glow.
From my vantage point in the front room I can watch ravens and squirrels rampaging through the protesting branches of the avocado tree across the street.
Today I was walking back to work after lunching with Mother at Canters. (What a lovely thing it is to be within walking distance of a deli.)
As I meandered on, reflecting on the glory of my vegetarian sandwich on whole wheat, I suddenly heard sqwaking. A zoo's sqwaking. It was plural. It was numerous. It was many. It was legion.
I turned to my left and beheld an outdoor aviary, built into thick, curling tree trunks. It was a jeweled aboretum, filled with what seemed like - to my near-sighted eyes - fluttering swatches of color.
(Aubrey apologies for the quality of these pictures, but really, they were such capricious, fluttering things)
I spoke to them - something happy and ridiculous - then two, colored Ruby and Jade, came closer: they were unafraid and inquisitive. Their patient curiosity was very gratifying. I was so sorry to leave and disappoint their friendship.
I don't like walking. I don't, in fact, know anybody who does.
But I walk a mile a day - round trip, to and from work - as I have no car and since in this current incarnation I can't fly (or bounce from tree to tree like a gibbon, or float through the air dandelion-like)...so I walk.
But on these walks I do notice things. Not cracks in the sidewalk (so I trip), or roots exploding through the concrete (and therefore fall), or people (except when they're walking their dogs). But I do notice the flowers whose colors span from red to orange to pink to yellow all within the span of one petal; I notice the Byzantine colored tiles embedded in the stairs of the older houses in my neighborhood, I notice vines cross-hatched across garden walls...in short I notice things that will not help me get to my job unscathed.
And sometimes I notice not things, but vignettes:
On my way to work earlier this week, my eyes were drawn to the balcony of a pale sepia colored house. The color was serene, and went well with the morning's gray and white sky. The wooden railings were creamy and worn. There was a terra-cotta pot on that balcony, with a filigree of branches growing from it. And perched on the smallest, trimmest twig was a tiny brown sparrow - singing a warning, or greeting, I really didn't know, not being at all versed in sparrow-speak.
And I witnessed it all: a perfect Winter scene, painted with a delicate and restrained brush...in mid-May.
Then, walking home, perhaps on that very same day, I stopped to admire the weathervane of one of the corner houses: it was in the shape of a bi-plaine: tilted upwards, straining to take flight. But this day I saw a most audacious bird, claiming a most audacious perch: a mockingbird balanced on the upper most propeller blade. It was singing, singing to the sky, since it was clear that no earthly creature was worthy to appreciate its proud voice.
He was impudent enough to perch atop the symbol of man's best-known attempt to conquer his skies. He sang fearlessly, with no concern or sense of danger.
Because it is a sin, you know.
