the water that Death swims in
the field in which we are held
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds.
It may come as a surprise to exactly no one, that I love baby Magpies. It goes without saying, of course, that I love all Birds, of all ages, the world over—but the soft descending trill of a baby Magpie sends a weakening through my body. They chirrup, and something in my cells recognises them, as though kin. We become tuning forks resonating across the unbridgeable distance between species. Perhaps this is a kind of love. I once helped care for a baby Magpie, who was about six days old when we met. I named him Jasper, in honour of the green jasper feathers he would one day grow, and he was the laziest Magpie I’d ever known. Typically, at his age, the mere hint of the day’s first feed would prompt an enthusiastic, elongated neck and cavernous gaping beak, but this fellow needed to be coaxed with forehead strokes and gentle words of encouragement. He worried me, at first, until it became clear that he was simply not a morning Bird and that, as far as he was concerned, showing any enthusiasm before 8am was embarrassing.