As seasons take flight

Across the township road, a pair of sandhill cranes rose trumpeting from the field as SiSi and I walked past at lunch time. Up the road a pair of wood ducks quietly paddled away up the creek as we watched. Before SiSi and I took that walk, I think I glimpsed a bluebird in the back yard trees although I might have mistaken a red-breasted nuthatch for a bluebird. For the past several days there’s been a robin or two visiting the back yard. The birds are back in town, just in time for the three day storm we’re expecting to start later today.

tom turkey mating display, late April

Photo by J. Harrington

We’ve neither seen nor heard turkeys strutting nor gobbling, but then neither have we seen or heard any turkeys at all. Perhaps they’re hanging around with the local whitetail deer that also seem to have disappeared. Which brings me to a confession. If I’m not watching birds or beasts of a noticeable size, I keep thinking the back yard is empty.

I forget that, under the snow, there are mouse tunnels through the grass. Under the soil there are shrews and moles and voles and pocket gophers and.... Last autumn we left a bunch of leaves unraked and unmulched to provide overwintering habitat for caterpillars and some butterflies and moths. This spring we’re deferring some parts of cleanup to ensure that winter is actually finished with us before we get disruptive. All of this undermines our sense of middleclass orderliness, neatness and dominance. That’s undoubtedly good for us, as is our growing awareness that living as part of nature is more complicated but more rewarding than living apart from nature. Now, if only the microfauna in the compost bin would get hungrier.

Birds Again

Jim Harrison - 1937-2016

A secret came a week ago though I already
knew it just beyond the bruised lips of consciousness.
The very alive souls of thirty-five hundred dead birds
are harbored in my body. It’s not uncomfortable.
I’m only temporary habitat for these not-quite-
weightless creatures. I offered a wordless invitation
and now they’re roosting within me, recalling
how I had watched them at night
in fall and spring passing across earth moons,
little clouds of black confetti, chattering and singing
on their way north or south. Now in my dreams
I see from the air the rumpled green and beige,
the watery face of earth as if they’re carrying
me rather than me carrying them. Next winter
I’ll release them near the estuary west of Alvarado
and south of Veracruz. I can see them perching
on undiscovered Olmec heads. We’ll say goodbye
and I’ll return my dreams to earth.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.