Arian Rhapsody

Avian Rhapsody

 

“You Can Live

As If Nothing Is a Miracle

Or Everything Is a Miracle.”

 

-Albert Einstein

 

---

 

-PRELUDE-

 

When I contemplate

What moves me to seek

The company of birds,

 

I am every time astounded by

The complexity of their being,

And the simplicity of what

Seems to be their task.

 

Like us, birds are a rhapsody

Of instinct, impulse, and meaning

 

They have flown in the trillions,

One at a time and all at once.[1]

                         

                          -FLICKER EPISODE-

 

More than the hairy of the trees, you wander on the grass,

Where there are dangers in your day and pitfalls you must pass

You pause by stumps and hide in blooms; you dawdle in the weeds

Yet seem assured about yourself and where your boldness leads

A scarlet mark below your crown suggests you would be known

But golden shafts are hidden in the wings that are not shown

You flicker on the grass you love; you glitter in the shade

You disappear into the day, and yet you do not fade.

 

-BEGIN THEME ONE-

 

I do not know about the birds,

Except that they are slight

And slip the capture

 

Of my words

Whenever they

 

Alight

 

They are like

Tickles on a breeze,

 

A clink of tiny chimes

 

That bid a poet to a fest

Of chirps and happy rhymes

 

They are not much of anything,

But everything I love

 

When I am hopping on the grass

Or flying high above

 

 

-BEGIN THEME TWO-

 

The swallows hoist themselves like Grecian sails,

For so absorbed in matters of the heart,

 

They boldly glide by dangers without care

And from the course of romance do not part

 

They share an ancient language so obscure

That other birds don’t start to hear them speak

 

They spoon in rising curves and figure-eights

And more than not, they gain the one they seek.

 

-NUTHATCH EPISODE-

 

Oh, blue-gray, black, and silver soul,

Your breast is wedding lace

 

And, in your flutter, I find faith

And truth upon your face

 

No wrong can seep into your heart,

No sin can stain your wing

 

You are the forest’s angel meek,

A shy and blissful thing

 

I wish that I were like to you,

A small and tender bird

 

That slips the notice of the night

But in the light, is heard.

 

 

 

 

-WAXWING EPISODE-

 

The berry bush is full of grace,

And, in its bosom, hides a bird �"

 

I know this, for I once by chance,

Saw “birdly” things as they occurred:

 

A tiny beak peaked from the leaves,

Then disappeared into the shade

 

To giggle in a queer delight

And tremble in the mirth it made.

 

-CONTINUE THEME ONE-

 

I do not know about the birds,

Except that they are quick

And bounce from branch

 

To bush,

 

To brain  

 

And somehow never stick

 

They only seek to win the day; they are a chortled joy

That undermines a poet’s plan with tricks that they employ

They are not much of anything, but everything I am[2]

When I am hiding from the rain or feeding in a glen

 

-CONTINUE THEME TWO-

 

The mourning doves love in another way,

Wherein no impulse moves them from a perch

 

Like marble gods that mock a beardless wind �"

They wait in wisdom and decline to search

 

They have a secret hidden in themselves

And share it not, though it the other knows:

 

A troth is sanctioned in a prudent way

And slowly comes to comfort as love grows.

 

-KINGFISHER EPISODE-

 

And there you perch upon a branch so fine,

A lappet moth might break it with a wing

 

And how you gaze at me

 

With open heart!

 

I half-expect 

The Earth itself

 

To sing

 

You are God’s crested harlequin of day

The one “most happy in his happiness”

 

You mock what is

Insensible beneath,

 

Yet deign to be

The love that I confess.

 

-HUMMINGBIRD EPISODE-

 

When he is in a garden’s eye, the Earth is truly his

He never seems to will or was, in being what he is

 

From bloom to bloom, he is a blur

A blear of tiny wings �"

 

But when he sips the dew of day, 

He seems the gist of things

 

A vital soul, a toy of God,

A slight and sudden breeze 

 

That zigzags through the hollyhocks,

Then, rushes for the trees

 

He hums his life and flutters fast �"

He is a mind aware that loving eyes

 

Are loving him,

When he is here

 

And there.

 

-BEGIN INTERLUDE-

 

Where do birds go when they fly?

What trees are their homes today?

Do they live from perch to perch?

And could they live another way?

 

They live in oak trees by the lake

And elms that rise above the hill

They sometimes wander far afield

And always go what ways they will

 

-FINCH EPISODE-[3]

 

The finch that fed

On crumbs of bread

 

And had no fear of me

 

Lies silent on

A powdered leaf

 

Beneath a powdered tree

 

Her faith was cudgeled

 

In the cold -

 

She died here

 

All alone,

 

A statue in the other world,

Her sculptor widely known

 

See how she flies

But does not rise

Into the dreary haze,

 

A remnant

In the after-gloom

To sadden and amaze.

 

-END THEME ONE-

 

I do not know about the birds,

Except that they are

 

Here

 

And like us all

Must lead their lives

Without a purpose clear

 

They are brief answers

To long thoughts,

 

A Happy children’s book,

With pop-up pages everywhere

That I am bound to look

 

They are not much of anything,

But everything I sing,

 

When I am perched upon a branch,

And fancy takes to wing.

 

-CONTINUE THEME TWO-

 

The redbirds, at their leisure, feed on love,

And couples dine together when they pair -

They keep the rules that govern company:

They nod a little and a little share

 

They move in semicircles on the grass

And chat their pretty patois as they do

But pregnant pauses seem to be a theme

Before love's conversation, they renew

 

 

-END INTERLUDE-

 

Where do birds go when they die?

What takes up their tiny souls?

Do they find their meaning in

The act of filling tiny holes?

 

Birds are the cursive in life’s book,

The ink that makes a day seem true

For they are warbled words of God

And feathered parts of me and you.

 

-END THEME TWO-

 

So are we brought together, bride and man,

In sundry rites of love in dizzy youth,

 

And like the birds must love as we are made

In fragile acts of faith and doubtful truth.

 

But no heart yet has found a way to pair

That can instruct another who would mate,

 

For rituals are fashioned in two ways:

One by the bird, one by the hand of fate.[4]

 

-ORIOLE EPISODE-

 

No bolder beauty

I have seen

 

 Than black

And orange

 

In league

With green,

 

High up upon

A branch, bedight

 

In budding leaves

And beams of light

 

No better beauty I have kept,

So long wherein a beauty leapt,

 

For in its bursting gleam of birth[5]

I saw the passion of the Earth.

 

---

 

“Consider the birds of the air, how they

neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns,

and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”

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[1] Eventually, Paris (the Christian personalist) began to consider the possibility that he was a necessary part of a greater and more important life structure.  He wondered why there are so many birds, and so many species of them. That caused him to ponder how all verifiably living things exist on a single planet in a known universe of at least 200 billion trillion stars. He concluded that he could not be separate from or more important than something that big and that complicated. “All I really know is that I seem to be the result of it,” he concluded, “and that my life is lived out within a context of chirping birds and countless stars.”

 

 

 

[2] To Paris, birds represented the freedom to enjoy doing existentially important things, and to do so while regularly experiencing the extreme exhilaration of flight.

 

 

[3] The poet speaks directly to Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s magnificent line: “Ye did not know the sacred dust.” Paris regularly viewed roadkill with indifference, but the sight of a dead bird who he had come to know on a personal basis provoked genuine grief in him, as well as disheartening thoughts of his mortality �" He returns to this issue even more directly in The Sixth Decoration.

 

 

 

[4] Putting aside the pairing activities of the avian world, Paris was a Christian personalist who believed that every act of love is a fragile demonstration of faith, one that is at least in part based on an individual’s belief in the concept of love, his highly personalized understanding of that concept, and his ability to express it.

 

This is not to say that Paris believed that love is an individual’s invention, only that a person’s concept of love and his means of expressing it are unique. In others words, there may indeed be an objective form of love, but given a person’s unique understanding of his reality, he is doomed to be an emotional Mr. Magoo where love is concerned.

 

[5] Oriole eggs incubate for about two weeks. The male helps in nest construction. It is often a “hanging” nest, but sometimes, nests are built behind the leaves of a shrub to protect it from the wind. Both parents feed the nestlings. Paris said he did not a observe the eggs hatching, but that watching the female feed the hatchlings, while the male was perched nearby caused him to think of the miraculous phenomenon of birth. That all of it took place against a backdrop of highly contrasting colors suggested to him a boldness in Creation.

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

A Lomg Read