strange hours
wonder, dread, and the shape of tiny wings
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
Sitting at a red light, the other day, I watched as a white van pulled out, suddenly, from a side road, in front of an oncoming car. The driver of the car slammed on its brakes and hit the horn. The man driving the van stopped, in the middle of the road, blocking the car, and began screaming at the woman driving it. I was on the other side of the road, facing the direction she was coming from, so I could see her face, which wore a mix of confusion, indignation and fear. The latter of which grew considerably when the man opened his door and began marching towards her. I find that in situations which suddenly become serious, a rare quiet descends. It is clinical in tone and, as my vision fixes and narrows, a plan will emerge, lightning fast. If her door isn’t locked and he drags her from the car take the keys from the ignition, get the wrench from the boot, and if necessary, aim for his knees. Thankfully, her door was locked, and she had the wherewithal to manoeuvre around him as he pounded on her window, before she left him, alone and unhinged, raging in the middle of the road. I had beside me on the passenger seat a fledgling Blackbird who had died just minutes before. She’d been attacked by a Magpie, and had a small but deep wound in her neck. So deep, in fact, that the blood coming from it had been the most extraordinary violet colour. Like an Iris, or a Petunia. The light turned green, and I carried on my way, there but for the grace…
During my first year of caring for baby Birds, whenever a juvenile escaped inside the baby Bird unit, I’d find myself beyond stressed. By the end of my second season I’d become a dab hand at catching Birds mid-flight, but that first year plagued me. I had recurring dreams of lunging for a Bird, only for my fingertips to skim their tail feathers. Or I’d catch one, wrapping my hand around its soft, warm body, only to open my fingers and find nothing there. These dreams mirror my relationship with hope, of late. I reach for it, over and over, but holding onto it seems impossible. The multifaceted threats of this time—from environmental collapse to horrific misogyny, and from open corruption to for-profit wars—form a weighty tyranny which is tied to the ankles of anyone paying attention. Faith in my own species set sail some years back, and I watch as it becomes ever smaller on the horizon. When I am far from myself, when I am lost to these horrors, I am fated to pendulate between my ever expanding sense of wonder, and an ever deepening sense of despair—and, at times, the violent oscillations betwixt the two threaten to break my neck. Thank heavens, then, that I am afforded solace in the shape of tiny wings. Thank heavens that when a fledgling Starling is tucked under my chin, or I am carrying a nestling Robin who is 8 grams of feather and insistence, telling him that soon he’ll meet the sky, I am returned to myself. I am recalled to the central axis from which the pendulum swings—wonder, dread, wonder, dread, wonder. From there I do not suffer the swing, I hold it. These are the mechanisms by which I survive loving the world. The Birds see me remembered, and I serve them, in return. It is as sweet a reciprocity as exists between Life and Death—where she brings him everything she has, and in return, he makes her precious. These horrors, this tyranny, refuses to reckon with the cost of a single life. Refuses the genuine weight of it. And so, I join the global resistance which battles the cult of expendability, by turning only ever more intently towards the inherent sacrality of 8 grams of insistence, and violet blood, and the violence I would apparently commit in the name of protecting the vulnerable.
Last week, a nest of five Robins arrived in the ICU. The following morning I went to feed them, but they would not stir. For an hour and a half, in twenty-minute cycles, I did all I could to rouse them. Whistling, giving the softest, smallest head strokes, painting a line of electrolytes along the side of each beak. Each time, nothing changed, save my rising dread, and I closed their incubator door and made my way out of the room—but then, over the hum of all the other incubators, I heard that most distinctive sound of the rattling, imperious trill of baby Robins who have, collectively and without warning, decided that they must immediately be fed. I rushed back, and all five had their necks fully extended, mouths as wide as physics would allow, each one utterly certain, in the way that only the very new can be, that they are the most important thing in existence. For half a second I joined them, tilting my own head back and looking to the sky in thanks and relief. I fed each one, and then they each promptly fell back to sleep. Not all Birds are early Birds, and hope keeps stranger hours still.
Yours in aimless flight…
This morning, after a restless night, I laid my head in my young son’s lap, feeling his tiny hands on my cheek. And in the infinite wisdom of a young soul, he asked, “How come grown ups wreck the earth if it’s our home?” I wish we could all feel our hearts shake at the cries of young little birds, reminding us that this matters. That the life all around us is indeed the most important thing in existence 🕊️💗.
Your stories, your distinct and beautiful way of telling them, are the birds beneath MY chin, steadying me in this nauseating pendulum swing. This, too, is hope: when distance and time disappear as reader and writer connect on the page, sharing something sacred. Thank you, sister across the sea.