Signs of
Life
Feb 26 2015
Birds swarm the feeder
like schooling fish,
swoop, dart, flick
Birds swarm the feeder
like schooling fish,
swoop, dart, flick
but never touch.
How uncanny, this
synchronous dance,
choreographed
by some 6th sense,
gaudy scales flashing
blacksilverblack.
But the birds are dark, the snow marred
by discarded seeds.
And not the soundless precision of fish
but a scolding cacophony
of squawks and tweets.
And then, some alarm sensed
off, in all directions
in a flutter of wings.
Disciplined fish
by some 6th sense,
gaudy scales flashing
blacksilverblack.
But the birds are dark, the snow marred
by discarded seeds.
And not the soundless precision of fish
but a scolding cacophony
of squawks and tweets.
And then, some alarm sensed
off, in all directions
in a flutter of wings.
Disciplined fish
held by water's weight
electric salt.
While in the lightness of air
birds come apart.
Would they have over-wintered
in this bitter cold
electric salt.
While in the lightness of air
birds come apart.
Would they have over-wintered
in this bitter cold
all alone,
no one stoking the feeder
for signs of life?
For swirling flight, when all is still,
furious chirping
bantam-weight will?
We come together, in collective effort
then disperse;
we, to feather beds, in the balm of night,
for signs of life?
For swirling flight, when all is still,
furious chirping
bantam-weight will?
We come together, in collective effort
then disperse;
we, to feather beds, in the balm of night,
and birds, to their furtive
shelter
in deathly quiet.
in deathly quiet.
Until first light,
when all as one
they once again take flight.
Except on a bare branch
in some dormant tree
when all as one
they once again take flight.
Except on a bare branch
in some dormant tree
a darkening.
Wild things
perish quietly
in the merciful cold,
unheard, unseen.
A frozen bird
undisturbed 'til spring.
My
neighbours have a giant feeder in their yard, and the birds literally swarm it.
They fly in tight formation, for a few seconds swooping in shimmering sheets
like schools of fish, only to disintegrate into squabbling squawking chaos. The
dog gives chase -- not that she'll ever catch one, or know what to do if she
does! -- and their formation breaks as they flee.
She'll
also catch sight of a squirrel, who occasionally emerge from their
semi-hibernation to scavenge fallen seeds. He levitates across the top of the
snow; she porpoises through it: doggedly determined, but destined to fail. Then
he scoots up a tree, leaving her confused as to where he vanished. This poem was
going to be another dog poem, and begin with the fleetness of a squirrel across
the snow. But I kept seeing the birds. And aside from that, I'm always grateful
not to write another self-indulgent celebration of dogs.
The
argument against bird feeders is that it makes them dependent. You have a moral
obligation to continue, once you start. There is also an argument that you
might be disrupting natural migration patterns. Or that you might be
confounding evolution, helping the weak links survive and thus diluting the
gene pool. But birds in winter are an ornament: welcome signs of life, with
their movement and song. Anyway, as little as I know about birds (which is very
little indeed!) I think these are mostly hardy little chickadees, which would
over-winter with or without our help.
I've
written before about animals dying in the wild. There is something about the
stoicism of their end I greatly admire: an injured animal, dragging itself off
deeper into the bush and quietly licking its wounds. There is the fatalism, the
toughness, the persisting instinct for self-preservation; then the stoic
surrender to death. We rarely see the dead bodies of wild animals: they're
either quickly scavenged, or discreetly decompose.
I
like the misdirection of the title: a poem called Signs of Life that
ends in the exact opposite.
I
like the elegant solution of blacksilverblack. I tried it the other way
around (silverblacksilver), as well
as with hyphens and slashes and separately. But the italics and compression
capture the speed, while at the same time conforming best to the line's natural
rhythm.
I
like the rhyming of the last stanza: from merciful, through bird,
unheard, to undisturbed. It works, but I hope without the reader
seeing the gears moving, and without sounding overly stylized or
shoe-horned-in.
There
is a push-pull between the collective and the individual running through the
poem: how the birds are like a school of fish that then disintegrates into
each-for-himself; how we work together to keep them fed, then disperse after
dark. We favour them as signs of life. But inevitably, some won't survive the
winter night, when they're on their own.
These
small birds live on the margins of survival. In their profusion, we never
notice the ones who don't make it. I imagine a frozen bird, untouched until
spring.
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