Untangling
all moss and feather and wool and love
Hello. This post is about Death & Birds. And it is dedicated to the poet Joshua Bond, who left this earthly life and became starbound on January 31st.
When I was about ten, a local falconer brought his Harris Hawk to my primary school. She was an exceptional Bird, regal, curious, and confident in a way that entranced my younger self. She had never been wild, though the wild still clearly lived within her as she and the falconer spent much time hunting together. The pair shared a language spoken in glances, head tilts and the occasional whisper. At that time in my life, I felt distinctly out of place. I found a diary entry from then, where I’d spoken to feeling like a package which had been delivered to the wrong address and was waiting to be returned, but in seeing this Bird, and in sensing the complexity and intelligence which existed within the interplay between she and her falconer, I caught a spark of something strangely familiar. Following a talk about falconry and Birds of prey, my small class was given the opportunity to have our photographs taken with this majestic Bird. Some kids declined completely, others agreed but only if the falconer was holding her, and a few decided they would brave holding her themselves. I—terrified, but besotted—was one of the latter, and so joined the end of the queue in the hopes of calming myself before reaching her. Ahead of me, child after child had the heavy duty leather glove upon which she sat placed on their hand while they grimaced and held their arm outstretched as far from themselves as they could. “Right,” I said to myself, “you get one go at this. Now walk up there and meet that beautiful being face-to-face. And if she attacks you, so be it.” My turn came, and with chin lifted and jaw firmly clenched I offered out my arm so that the glove, and the majestic Harris Hawk, could be placed upon it. For a few seconds, I froze, shocked by the weight of her, by the power in the grip of her talons and by the fierceness of her hooked beak. But then I recalled the way that she and her falconer spoke; subtle, wordless, body-to-body. And so, terrified, and in awe and wonder, I exhaled the breath I’d been holding and drew my arm into my body, to hold her face inches from my own. She was electric. Humming with skill and latent power. I marvelled at how a being could simultaneously be so still and so fiercesome. We held each other in regard for a moment, before the falconer, smiling, said “She likes you”. “I like her” I whispered, before our photograph was taken, and I handed her back to the falconer. Thanking them both.
There is a pervasive web of intelligence which moves through life, infused into everything from the micro to the macrocosmic. It is that which makes us sleep, and dream, and age, and what whispers to a stem cell which organ it will become. There are times in life when seeds are planted, and the intelligence tells them, “Not yet, not yet…” through Winter; and then, “Yes, now!” in Spring. My meeting the Hawk was one such seed, which lay dormant for decades until the intelligence knew that external conditions were right, and it was time for me to extend an arm and pull life towards my body so that I (terrified and in awe) might finally meet it face-to-face.
The nesting boxes went up at the weekend. At the end of every Autumn, we empty and clean the season’s nesting boxes, and there was, this past year, inside the Blue Tit’s favourite house, the most perfect, cozy little nest. It was all moss and feather and wool and love, with an eggcup sized scoop in the centre, inside of which lay three miniature skeletons. So tiny as to be barely visible on first glance, but three distinct little finger nail sized skulls, and three perfect little spines. Having some familiarity with extremely young Blue Tits, I’d hazard that these three were not long hatched, when they died. It’s impossible to know why it was that they did, or whether the parents abandoned the nest before or after they had. Sometimes, if a Blue Tit’s mating partner is killed they will abandon the nest as they know that it cannot be successfully tended alone. Sometimes, new born Birds just die. Because, like us, they are fragile, and, like us, they require a deceptively complex alignment of conditions to be met in order to survive. We are knots in a web, you and I. You and I, and these three Blue Tits who never opened their eyes, and every single Blue Tit that ever came before them. And the pervasive intelligence lives within the web, not within us. It is not ours to claim; we are its, to move through. It speaks to seeds and stem cells and to all dying bodies in exactly the same voice. And Death is not the knot being cut. Death is the knot untangling, releasing back into the web from which it was made.
And that is not disappearance.
That, is belonging.
Yours in aimless flight…
Friends, if you’d like, you can read some of Josh’s poetry here, and you can read a beautiful poem written for him by his loving partner, Veronika Bond, here.
If a part of you is tired of keeping Death at a careful distance, and is ready instead to draw it close, I'd invite you to dive into The Deep End:
Chloe, as someone who has always been afraid of the unknown after death (for myself, never for others) your words have a power to soothe my heart and make me feel like death is but a beautiful companion. Your closing lines gave me that feeling with such clarity. The belonging. I am always so grateful for your writing, which feels like a whisper from the web 💗
This one landed particularly hard, as today I had to relinquish a wounded baby goat I had been tending, abandoned by his mother. But it’s best that he has returned to the Everything. You remind me, as you always do, that Death is not the enemy.