lion's tooth
avant-garde jazz and celestial relatives
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
Our front lawn has become a field of dandelions. ‘Dente de lion’—lion’s tooth—from the jagged-edged shape of the leaves. When these gorgeous yellow flowers go to seed and turn into white fluffy “clocks”, the Goldfinches collectively rejoice. The little Birds will spend all afternoon moving through the grass, heads bobbing as they tease miniature seeds from the clocks, second by second. Being on the ground so long, of course, leaves them vulnerable, and so whenever I am home I feel compelled to position myself at the kitchen table, from where I can watch both them and any neighbourhood cats which make the mistake of venturing up our drive. (Please, dearest cat-people, do not come for me. I have known and loved many a feline, and I have seen up-close what some of them do to wildlife. If a predatory animal, wild or domesticated, threatens the safety of another being on our watch we will not hesitate to intervene; water-guns blazing. The UK is home to over ten million domestic cats, and the Mammal Society estimates that 275 million prey are caught each year, 55 million of whom are Birds—but those estimates are based on returned prey, and other research shows that cats bring home less than a third of their total kills, so in reality the numbers are far higher. The unsubscribe button should be in the top righthand corner, if you need it.) Time always turns into dandelion syrup as I watch these little day labourers at work. I wonder what perching on a flower twice your size must be like. Profound, I imagine. I hope. They make me think of my five-year-old niece and her experience of the world. How, at the farmers market, there is a public piano cemented into the ground, opened only between the hours of 11 and 3, and how she likes to be there at 10.55, ready to show me the inner workings of the instrument and explain how the hammers strike the strings, who then sing the notes. She plays the piano like the love child of an avant-garde jazz musician and a blacksmith—bound by neither harmony nor moderation. At the weekend she performed while singing the lyrics to Mull of Kintyre by 1970’s soft-rock band Wings. There is a distinct type of joy to be experienced in watching a five-year-old sing, earnestly, “Far have I traveled, and much have I seen...”. Watching her, I become certain that whatever heaven is made of, so is she.