Monday, February 21, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Blackpoll
Once, I rescued a frail creature
from the neighbor’s goliath
tabby: Not fully black,
but black-and-white pied, the bird—
a minuscule finch or black-
poll—fluttered against the paws.
I trapped the cat’s nape,
lifted the bird as if she were a cherished
wish, coaxed her to flee.
Woozy, she wobbled
to the trees, flitting and resting
at heart-level till she again
found her height.
A samaritan’s reward is her rescuee’s
health… I didn’t grudge the tabby
either, his natural drive. But next day,
arriving home from work,
three small pied birds, kinswomen,
no doubt, of the first,
attended on my front steps.
They rose in unison at my greeting,
wove three quick circles around me
in avian pageant, and shyly fled.
Once, I rescued a frail creature
from the neighbor’s goliath
tabby: Not fully black,
but black-and-white pied, the bird—
a minuscule finch or black-
poll—fluttered against the paws.
I trapped the cat’s nape,
lifted the bird as if she were a cherished
wish, coaxed her to flee.
Woozy, she wobbled
to the trees, flitting and resting
at heart-level till she again
found her height.
A samaritan’s reward is her rescuee’s
health… I didn’t grudge the tabby
either, his natural drive. But next day,
arriving home from work,
three small pied birds, kinswomen,
no doubt, of the first,
attended on my front steps.
They rose in unison at my greeting,
wove three quick circles around me
in avian pageant, and shyly fled.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
The flock of geese
I think I have always known that when you cross rivers things change. When I was young in the Twin Cities, and crossed the still-narrow and willow-strong Mississippi from one city to the other many times, sometimes many times per day, my life was rootless. My father left and visited occasionally, the five of us kids changed rooms now and then, acquired and lost rodents, reptiles, fish and friends. Staying for overnights or weekends at grandmothers' houses, we always knew we were guests and would be going home, and back at home, we never felt comforted, but that we would have to go somewhere else to enjoy closeness, and we often crossed rivers and culverts on our way from one house to another. But our lives were precarious, we would have to pack and leave. So many crossings, so many changes. I scarcely knew on which side of the river I belonged, and I wished for the waters to bring me to a new world, a new place.
Many years later, I was crossing a different river eight months pregnant with twins and I felt something change. I was not surprised. I was riding the city bus that autumn afternoon to a healing session at a bookstore. The November trees were bare and stretched up toward a mottled grey sky. As the bus crossed the Alewife Brook, I glanced out the window. A flock of geese was passing overhead, a precarious necklace that an unseen hand seemed to be shaking, trying to dislodge goose-shaped beads. At the same instant, several small hands and feet drew a path across the outer reaches of their atmosphere, the inner surface of my belly.
Those two simultaneous lines of movement undid something in my psyche, and brought me to an awareness of multiple levels of movement, of comings and goings. The geese flew, the bus's drive shaft rotated on its axis, the bus churned forward across the bridge, the tiny hands and feet described their intimate arc, and the river below us flowed in its dirty concrete channel to a salty harbor six or eight miles away—the combination of all these quickenings at once turned in me a cosmic machine, like the gears and orbits you see in a silent movie town-square clockworks--ancient, ponderous, plodding; the movements rendered in me a state of consciousness that I can only describe as other, and knowing.
In my mind, the children and birds changed places, and the birds were then drawing their wingtips across my belly from the inside. My children in that instant were flying with their companions south for the winter, and I knew the pregnancy at once to be a sad one, with partings and goodbyes.
I don't remember the healing session in the bookstore that day, but I remember the wingtips of my small birds as the geese flew overhead, the sadness, the workings of the cosmic. I have often tried to capture the story of the two birds, to write them into their own children's tale, of knowing and adventure and foresight. Two birds on an adventure, one flies up, one flies down. Two birds who are jolly companions. Two birds who get into mishaps together. But nothing can take me away from the fact that these birds are babies, and one of them takes his leave, crosses that great river to the other side. It has taken me eighteen years to be able to write this story.
I think I have always known that when you cross rivers things change. When I was young in the Twin Cities, and crossed the still-narrow and willow-strong Mississippi from one city to the other many times, sometimes many times per day, my life was rootless. My father left and visited occasionally, the five of us kids changed rooms now and then, acquired and lost rodents, reptiles, fish and friends. Staying for overnights or weekends at grandmothers' houses, we always knew we were guests and would be going home, and back at home, we never felt comforted, but that we would have to go somewhere else to enjoy closeness, and we often crossed rivers and culverts on our way from one house to another. But our lives were precarious, we would have to pack and leave. So many crossings, so many changes. I scarcely knew on which side of the river I belonged, and I wished for the waters to bring me to a new world, a new place.
Many years later, I was crossing a different river eight months pregnant with twins and I felt something change. I was not surprised. I was riding the city bus that autumn afternoon to a healing session at a bookstore. The November trees were bare and stretched up toward a mottled grey sky. As the bus crossed the Alewife Brook, I glanced out the window. A flock of geese was passing overhead, a precarious necklace that an unseen hand seemed to be shaking, trying to dislodge goose-shaped beads. At the same instant, several small hands and feet drew a path across the outer reaches of their atmosphere, the inner surface of my belly.
Those two simultaneous lines of movement undid something in my psyche, and brought me to an awareness of multiple levels of movement, of comings and goings. The geese flew, the bus's drive shaft rotated on its axis, the bus churned forward across the bridge, the tiny hands and feet described their intimate arc, and the river below us flowed in its dirty concrete channel to a salty harbor six or eight miles away—the combination of all these quickenings at once turned in me a cosmic machine, like the gears and orbits you see in a silent movie town-square clockworks--ancient, ponderous, plodding; the movements rendered in me a state of consciousness that I can only describe as other, and knowing.
In my mind, the children and birds changed places, and the birds were then drawing their wingtips across my belly from the inside. My children in that instant were flying with their companions south for the winter, and I knew the pregnancy at once to be a sad one, with partings and goodbyes.
I don't remember the healing session in the bookstore that day, but I remember the wingtips of my small birds as the geese flew overhead, the sadness, the workings of the cosmic. I have often tried to capture the story of the two birds, to write them into their own children's tale, of knowing and adventure and foresight. Two birds on an adventure, one flies up, one flies down. Two birds who are jolly companions. Two birds who get into mishaps together. But nothing can take me away from the fact that these birds are babies, and one of them takes his leave, crosses that great river to the other side. It has taken me eighteen years to be able to write this story.
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