Ornaments

Aug 5 2015

The little bird

was ferocious, intense,

hurtling himself at the glass

again and again,

2 thin legs

strutting on the ledge

like David, calling-out Goliath.

Sun-dried crap

splatting the window

baked to aluminum.

Tiny pocks

from his short sharp beak.

A bird in spring,

claiming territory

taking-on rivals.

Furious

at his own reflection

taunting him back,

no time to feed

wired on testosterone.

The rustle of leaves, dappled light.

Flowers, on the cusp of bloom

compact and succulent.

And bird-song, like ornaments of sound.

Who knew

there was also madness, fever, urgent sex

behind the green façade

of this pastoral Eden?

A tiny bird, airily feathered and hollow-boned

who would drive in his beak, rat-a-tat-tat

peck out your eye,

if it weren't for the triple-pane glass

you flinch behind.

This happens frequently in spring: the window and ledge are a mess; the little bird is fierce and undeterred. I'm writing about it now (early August) because a short phrase caught my eye as I riffed through the articles in the most recent New Yorker.

All I saw in the microsecond before I scanned to the next page was this: a robin redbreast began hurling itself at a window. That's all it took to light me up with a flash of recognition! (Not to mention that this past spring there was also a determined woodpecker greeting each sunrise by persistently bashing on my downspout, presumably to make as fierce a noise as possible in order to intimidate his territorial rivals. (Although at first I figured the damned thing was merely brain-damaged, and somehow mistook aluminum for wood!))

I can't entirely explain my penchant for Biblical references. Here, there's David and Goliath, as well as Eden. Maybe it's a bit of subconscious mischief: an atheist quoting Scripture, just as the devil is reputedly able to do! Although the truth is that the cultural heritage of Judaism and Christianity belongs to all of us, not just believers.

Anyway, if a bird can have facial expression, this one did: angry, determined, to the death. Or more likely it was just his posture and relentlessness, and I inferred the face. When we hear bird-song, we imagine the beauty and benevolence of nature. But in reality, these little Napoleons are proclaiming territory, declaring acts of war. We have become so detached from nature, we tend to see it all as Disneyland.

(Here's the paragraph that began the story and contained that fateful phrase. (The article A Ghost in the Family, by Dana Goodyear, can be found at http://nyr.kr/1IKq9fh): Early on the morning I went to see the San Francisco artists Barry McGee and Clare Rojas at their weekend place, in Marin County, a robin redbreast began hurling itself at a window in their living room. “It won’t stop,” Rojas said. She picked up a sculpture of a bird from the inside sill to warn it off. When that didn’t work, Rojas instructed her fourteen-year-old daughter, Asha, to cut out three paper birds, which she taped to the window, as if to say: GO AWAY. “Can I let it in, Clare?” McGee asked gently. Absolutely not, Rojas answered. Thud. The bird hit the glass again, and their three dogs barked wildly.)