What the birds and Ned Stark know . . .

October by Emily Dickinson
These are the days when Birds come back—
A very few—a Bird or two—
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old—old sophistries of June—
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh fraud that cannot cheat the Bee—
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear—
And softly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.

Oh sacrament of summer days,
Oh Last Communion in the Haze—
Permit a child to join.

Thy sacred emblems to partake—
Thy consecrated bread to take
And thine immortal wine!


I came across this piece yesterday while searching for a poem about bird migration.  I decided to wait and post it this morning, not realizing then that the forecast for the rest of this week would be more June than October-like and thus making it all the more perfect poem for this first day of October.  (And October was its original title although now it's more commonly titled according to its first line as so many of Emily's poems are.)

So why was I looking for a poem about bird migration you may be asking?  Well I'll tell you.  I spent the better part of Sunday morning spying on the various species of birds who were stopping by the dogwood tree in our front yard.  Evidently our neighborhood is an avian rest stop on the migration interstate and Sunday morning that tree must have looked like the equivalent of a Starbucks to our fine feathered friends.  

At first it was the robins who came through.  They caught my attention when one plump bird swooped in to land on the edge of a branch loaded with red berries, only to discover as he put his feet down that it wasn't strong enough to hold him so he toppled to the grass. (If you've never seen a grown bird fall out of a tree in which he's trying to land, it's a pretty amusing sight and makes you reassess the notion that they're graceful creatures.)  He then proceeded to do a repeated hop, bounce and flutter up from the grass to try to get to the branch before giving up and finding a sturdier limb to stand on.  Other robins soon descended, some lighter than the first chubby visitor and thus able to balance on the slender branches.  

After a few minutes, the robins took flight as a cloud of European starlings descended on the neighborhood, noisily making their way from yard to yard and tree to tree. (It's amazing to think that this now highly invasive species of bird started from fewer than 60 released in Central Park in the late 1800's and now number about 150 million.  It seems like at least a million of them  were in Wheaton/Silver Spring/North Kensington on Sunday.) They left and a few stragglers came . . . a yellow bellied sap sucker, a cardinal couple, a smattering of wrens, and one lone brilliant but skittish blue jay.  

Then the process started all over again, minus the robin falling out of the tree.  I guess he learned his lesson. By noon the cranberry leaved dogwood that had been loaded with fire engine red berries when I woke up was stripped clean.

I'm sure there's a lesson about preparation and faith in here somewhere.  Because despite it being a balmy 80 plus degrees this first week in October, as the birds know . . .

(With thanks to George R. R. Martin and the current Game of Thrones mania for
providing a large selection of "Winter is coming" graphics from which to choose.)

Bird Migration, Squirrel Reaction, and How They Both Relate to Centering Prayer and Meditation

MINDFUL by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early (Beacon Press)
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for—
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?


Today was a day I woke early, although I stayed in bed until the light began to creep into the room.  While the darkness dissipated and shadows took on solid forms, I listened to the sounds coming through my open bedroom window.  I once heard that you can tell the temperature by how fast a cricket chirps.  This morning I listened as the sound of early commuters on Connecticut Avenue gradually silenced the slow stridation of cricket song in the pre-dawn chill and when I heard the trash and recycling trucks making their rounds, I finally roused myself out of bed.

Usually I'm so focused on looking for or at things that delight me that I don't pay attention to sounds.  But at this time of year, the sounds are what draw me to my window-- the footfall of an unknown animal creeping across the backyard in the middle of the night, rain drops rustling the burnished  leaves of the dogwood tree, the birds who take a mid-migration break like a busload of tourists on their journey south, foraging for food and using the facilities in the avian rest stop that is my yard. 

Last week it was a flock of grackles that swooped in, blanketing the trees and the grass with their iridescent bodies.  If I hadn't heard their shrieks and squawks I would have missed the ensuing scene when the black squirrel who likes to sit in the hollow of the maple tree scrambled down to chase them away.  He'd scurry up to a bird and chatter at it until it flew out of his reach whereupon he'd turn his attention to the next closest invader. 

Resist no bird, retain no bird,
react to no bird, return to your sacred word.

I was amused at the futility of the squirrel's actions until this morning when I was journaling about the congruence between writing and meditation.  I was in the midst of what I felt was a really good flow in my morning pages.  But as soon as I had that thought, the flock of thoughts came flying in, squawking and making a mess.  I tried to chase them away but that just created more noise and distraction.  The same thing happens to me sometimes during my centering prayer.  I sit down to meditate and think to myself, "I'm doing really well here . . ." which is an invitation for the thoughts to come and the chatter to begin. 

I've written about monkey or puppy mind before on this blog.  Maybe I need to start a bestiary for meditation and add bird thoughts and squirrel reaction to the compendium.  For now though, I'm going to go do my twenty minute sit and if the noisy bird thoughts do come, I'll try to remind myself if I can just stay in the cozy hollow of silence and presence, they'll eventually fly away.   

Monday or How Billy Collins taught me it was okay to look out my window . . .

MONDAY by Billy Collins from The Trouble with Poetry and Other Poems (Random House)

Jane Austen may not have been a poet but she did
write at this table by the window every morning,
and probably spent some time looking outside.

The birds are in their trees,
the toast is in the toaster,
and the poets are at their windows.

They are at their windows
in every section of the tangerine of earth-
the Chinese poets looking up at the moon,
the American poets gazing out
at the pink and blue ribbons of sunrise.

The clerks are at their desks,
the miners are down in their mines,
and the poets are looking out their windows
maybe with a cigarette, a cup of tea,
and maybe a flannel shirt or bathrobe is involved.

The proofreaders are playing the ping-pong
game of proofreading,
glancing back and forth from page to page,
the chefs are dicing celery and potatoes,
and the poets are at their windows
because it is their job for which
they are paid nothing every Friday afternoon.

Which window it hardly seems to matter
though many have a favorite,
for there is always something to see-
a bird grasping a thin branch,
the headlights of a taxi rounding a corner,
those two boys in wool caps angling across the street.

The fishermen bob in their boats,
the linemen climb their round poles,
the barbers wait by their mirrors and chairs,
and the poets continue to stare
at the cracked birdbath or a limb knocked down by the wind.

By now, it should go without saying
that what the oven is to the baker
and the berry-stained blouse to the dry cleaner,
so the window is to the poet.

Just think-
before the invention of the window,
the poets would have had to put on a jacket
and a winter hat to go outside
or remain indoors with only a wall to stare at.

And when I say a wall,
I do not mean a wall with striped wallpaper
and a sketch of a cow in a frame.

I mean a cold wall of fieldstones,
the wall of the medieval sonnet,
the original woman's heart of stone,
the stone caught in the throat of her poet-lover.   

My favorite window is the one by my bed that looks out onto the back yard.  I tend to wake up the first time as the milky light of morning pours into dawn, so I get up and look to see what birds are breakfasting there.  The robins of early spring have now been joined by common place birds I think I know the names of but am not quite sure-- are they wrens or are they sparrows?  I recognized the mourning dove when I saw her yesterday.  And the grackles last week.  Occasionally an odd bird turns up that sends me leafing through my Audubon guide.  I'm still awaiting the return of last year's sap sucker who never managed to venture into a tree to be true to his name, but preferred to forage in the grass.   

A view of the wildflower garden from my window

Later in the morning, after a cup of tea and before I move to my desk, I survey the wildflower garden to see what's in bloom.  Again, I'm not a very well informed naturalist.  I don't know the names of all the plants but I can identify the columbines in an array of purples and blues.  They lord over the salvia and foxglove, and I can almost hear them bragging about their abundant blossoms as they sway and swagger in the breeze.  In a few weeks they'll be quieted by the wild echinacea that takes over the garden and then I'll start looking for the goldfinches who land on the stalks, pluck the petals off the flowers and feast on the seeds.

As I pass the window throughout the day I'll look outside some more.  Is that a rabbit or a clump of brown leaves under the forsythia bush on the hill?  Is it going to rain soon or can I sneak outside for a quick walk?  What is that squirrel up to, hunkered down in the hollow of the maple tree?

Before I rearranged my work space, the small table cum desk that barely held my lap top was in front of a big window that looks out into my side yard and my neighbor's back yard.  I used to find myself endlessly sitting and staring out the window when I "should" have been working.  I used to think of this wool gathering as a manifestation of one or more of my character flaws . . . procrastination, laziness, acedia . . . I could go on but I won't.  

Then I read the Billy Collins poem above and realized that looking out of the window is not an avoidance of work, rather it is part of my work as a writer. The practice of seeing, noticing, observing comes before the work of sharpening the pencils or turning on the computer.  Just as a chef has to chop the vegetables for the mis en place, I have to gather the elements I need to create.  The images, colors, sounds, textures that I see out my window may go into what I cook up on the page on any given day, but most importantly the task of looking out the window provides me with the most  important ingredient I feel I can include in my writing:  gratitude.


BTW - How great is that line, "in every section of the tangerine earth"-- perfection!