all crispy golden and hot lard fried
Next time I’m slidin’ down Bohicket
I’ll take careful note
let my piedmont pulse relax—
inhale deep
drop my heart beat to lizard belly low
ignore the pressures pushing ever faster for me to go
I’ll ease off the gas—scoot down
sit down
remember the wild me—
the one I truly know
I’ll heed the old oaks warnings—
Hey Bo—
Slow ya’ roll
FIELD MARK 1: LOVE FOR A SONG
Love is barter—bits of affection traded for pieces of adoration.
Love is desire doled out on the whippoorwill’s summer wanting. It is our craving for the meadowlark’s ringing song—our longing for spring’s greening from our sun-starved spirits down to our bare-toed roots. We seek the winding path and wander until we find the sweet spots—blackwater cypress swamp, tall-grass prairie sweep—the place where moonlight glancing off of tide-slicked stones makes us weep.
We want the wild soul, and a shadow-dwelling wood thrush heaps it on us in self-harmonizing sonata. We revel in wildflower bloom—marvel in the migratory sojourns of birds dodging falling stars. Sink yourself deep in the dizzying dance of pollen-drunk bees. Find hope in the re-leaved canopies of the tallest trees. Wind and water—storm and surf—they can move us to other ends. Therein is the turn on. It’s the honey sweet seduction. Nature asks only that we notice—a sunrise here, a sunset there. The surge, that overwhelming inexplicable thing in a swallow’s joyous flight or the dawning of new light that melds heart and head into sensual soul in that moment of truly seeing—that is love.
ON CONSIDERING THE HOLOCENE WITH WHITE MEN
A pile of feathers,
barred tan and brown
dirty and dust-covered
huddled in the shadows of former infrastructure.
Graffiti paintings of
Abe Lincoln maybe smoking a blunt
depict a stark honesty of in between land gone
past marsh muck wet
to throat-sore desiccated dry beyond life.
The owl formerly great
and now limp horned sits in the simmering cool
of a heated day.
Dull yellow eyes blink slow caution
no one pays attention to.
There is no Bubo virginanus glare, only listless
half dead owl stare.
Why here? Why now?
Why so tame oh great fierce predator of the night?
We cannot surmise reason or
rationale for what we see.
Only guesses, in feints and jabs
offering half-hearted scientific guesses,
hypotheses of poison or predators
or just the probability of unlucky youth.
Holocene writers on the cusp of imagined Anthropocene
apocalypse make speculation artfully.
Life will not likely persist through the late train
that zooms passengers between this interim lying here
in Yolo hinterland
and somewhere else they will not notice
because their heads are down in their phones.
Skulls of rodents killed,
ripped head from tiny pawed limb
digested,
and coughed up again in neatly packed pellets of bone and fur
reflect the natural history of the hard pan
hard scrabble edge of everything—
expanding urban at the edge of disappearing rural,
super-highway stretching eight lanes wide
beside gravel two track,
risen trestle erected to hyper speed train
and slow pace of four wanderers feeling their way.
Owl blinks.
We leave wondering
Depressed
Knowing
Owl will soon join the other dead things
mapping the coming days.
FIELD MARK 17: GOOD ENOUGH
On many days in my own backyard, I wonder about the birds that somehow find “home” in the postage stamp of waning suburbia that used to be oak, hickory, and pine—but turned by someone’s idea of “progress” some forty years ago from wild forest to feral fragment, it’s where hosta and privet and mulberry and sunflower and dooryard violet and butterfly bush and struggling tomato reign. In the midst of all that some would claim should not be where “natives” should, I sit and watch and wonder how the wrens, cardinals, robins, chickadees, thrashers, pine warblers, chipping sparrows, house finches, titmice, bluebirds, woodpeckers, doves, mockingbirds, and nuthatches survive. Beyond the glimpses at feeders and fountains and the familiar calls that fall between the audible cracks left by lawn mowers, barking dogs, and passing cars, they seem to make do in a world of “alien invaders.” And then my wondering wanders far far away when some exotic visitor from some place far south of my neighborhood knowing decides that this place—my home—is good enough even in its non-native besieged state. There’s a call I recognize and high above the weeds I claim as wildflowers, a tropical bird—a great crested flycatcher—finds the box I erected from the remains of a storm-tossed pine a few years back, hoping the real estate would find favor among hole-nesting flycatcher kind. I planted some more zinnias next to the canna lilies. Neither are “native” but who among us truly is. All of us, by free will or force have come here from someplace else. Here—today it seems, the place I call home, is good enough for birds and me too.
FIELD MARK 3: IN REMEMBRANCE (AUTO OBIT)
At the end—to be loved and loving. That will be grand. Children chattering and grown to good. Woodlands walked and wandered. Surf sauntered through. Trees scaled to spy on the waking wood. Streaking stars hauling wishes through an ink black sky. A lingering embrace. That cold night in the desert when first I heard the coyote cry.
DEER WORSHIP
My deer stand is a tower of self-diagnosis. A tall temple of introspection where I see more clearly in the graying dark of lingering night than in desk-bound fluorescence. I climb a pine and leave responsibility behind and expectation on the ground to look out into a realm of wildness that is more mirror than any hanging on walls. There are no promises to break or contracts to breach except those bargained alone to be fully in whatever moment comes. I can clearly see the red-tail hawk rising on unseen hope.
A gray fox finds fall’s fortune under a persimmon tree—but I know the sweeter luck lies with me.
The rut-blind buck with nose to ground and white tail wagging to the sky focuses intentions on willing does and making more of his kind. Whether I watch in envy of his freedom or lay cross-hairs heart-lung-high is never simple math. There’s free-will and ultimate choice. It is Paradise, Heaven, Nirvana, and Brigadoon with a bit of Rabbit Hole thrown in. All I witness is worthy of worship. Wild things are not burdened with guilt or sin.
It is prayer and meditation and godless pleas thrown as alms and ash into the autumn wind—it is a counseling couch with no limits on listening. Sparrows offer free advice on seed searching. My deer stand is downward facing dog and genuflection—a supplicating place where time is the rare commodity sought and patience the only cost. I watch sun and moon rise circle and rest without rewinds or resets. In my tree commandments don’t come in ten, but one—just be.
FIELD MARK 11: SUNSET CAMP
Last night, as whippoorwills called in the holler and frogs made love in shallow pools and katydids and crickets bowed dry wings on dry wings from green leaves in darkening symphony and lightnin’ bugs signaled semaphore intent to make more of themselves and twigs snap-crackled beneath the knife-edged hooves of deer—or berry-fatted paws of black bear in the dimmed forest—and the bats flutter-flapped overhead, the three of us calling ourselves poets sat far apart from one another but near enough to the earth to share in the life that emerged from beyond the reach of a world unraveling at the seams of murder and
injustice. There is a privilege in this occasional escape and off-grid ignorance that I admit to—that I question the fairness of. I worry as Black men die in the streets, though, I’m too far away to feel the necessary pain. Too high on friends and verse and a beer or two. Not to worry, it all floods in on the drive back when I see the first police car cruising and wonder. Will I make it home?
MEANINGS & REGULATORY RAMBLE
NINE RULES FOR THE BLACK BIRDER
1) Be prepared to be confused with the other black birder. Yes, there are only two of you at the bird festival. Yes, you’re wearing a name tag and are six inches taller than he is. Yes, you will be called by his name at least half a dozen times by supposedly observant people who can distinguish gull molts in a blizzard.
2) Carry your binoculars—and three forms of identification—at all times. You’ll need the binoculars to pick that tufted duck out of the flock of scaup and ring-necks. You’ll need the photo IDs to convince the cops, FBI, Homeland Security, and the flashlight-toting security guard that you’re not a terrorist or escaped convict.
3) Don’t bird in a hoodie. Ever.
4) Nocturnal birding is a no-no. Yeah, so you’re chasing that once-in-a-lifetime rare owl from Outer Mongolia that’s blowing up your twitter alert. You’re a Black man sneaking around in the nether regions of a suburban park—at dusk, with a spotting scope. Guess what? You’re going to have some prolonged conversations with the authorities. Even if you look like Forest Whitaker—especially if you look like Forest Whitaker.
5) Black birds—any black birds—are your birds.The often-overlooked blackbirds, family Icteridae, are declining across the board. Then there are the other birds that just happen to be black—crows and their kin are among the smartest things with feathers and wings. They’re largely ignored because of their ubiquity and often persecuted because of stereotype and misunderstanding. Sounds like profiling to me.
6) The official word for an African American in cryptic clothing—camo or otherwise—is incognegro. You are a rare bird, easy to see but invisible just the same. Until you snap off the identification of some confusing fall warbler by chip note as it flies overhead at midnight, or a juvie molting shorebird in heavy fog, you will just be a token.
7) Want to see the jaws of blue-blooded birders drop faster than a northern gannet into a shoal of shad? Tell them John James Audubon, the patron saint of American ornithology, had some black blood coursing through his veins. Old JJ’s mom was likely part Haitian. Hey, if we can claim Tiger Woods …
8) Use what’s left of your black-president momentum on the largely liberal birder crowd to step to the front of the spotting-scope line to view that wayward smew that wandered into US waters from Eurasia. Tell them you’re down with Barack, and they’ll move even more to the left to let you look at the doomed duck. After all, you stand about as much of a chance of seeing a smew again as you do of seeing another black president.
9) You’re an endangered species—extinction looms. You know all the black birders like siblings and can count them on two hands. You’re afraid to have lunch with them all because a single catastrophe could wipe the species from the face of the earth. There’s talk and posturing about diversifying the hobby, but the money is not where the mouths are. People buy binoculars that would fund the economy of a small Caribbean island—where, coincidentally, lots of neotropical migratory birds winter, and where local people of color might contribute to their conservation if more birders cared about more than counting birds.
HOW TO ADORE BIRDS
1) Love and appreciate all things with feathers.
2) Everyone has a bird story. EVERYONE.
3) Never ever forget the beauty in the common thing. Take time to recognize the subtle differences in cardinal crest perkiness or crow blackness.
4) Slow down. Absorb birds.
5) Every bird is a life bird. Every time. The first time or the thousandth time. If you’re breathing when you see the bird, it’s a lifer.
6) Don’t take yourself so seriously. Birding is an imperfect craft wrought with ego mines. You will make mistakes. The birds know who they are. If you misidentify them, they don’t really care.
7) List birds with your heart. You’ll not forget them when written in blood with pulse.
8) Keep a life list of people and places. See beyond your binoculars to understand context and culture. This breeds empathy. Empathy breeds care. Care breeds love.
9) Be the bird. See the miracle in each and every one of them. Conservation is the act of caring so intensely for something that you want only the best for its survival and future being. That intense care and love, is called conservation.
10) Find a way to share your love of not just birds—but nature—with others. Even better if the ones shared with don’t share your skin color or ethnicity or gender / nongender designation or religion or …
11) Don’t be the birder that causes others to say “Now that’s why I don’t bird.” We don’t need more birder police keeping track of missed IDs on fall flycatchers and third-year gulls.
12) Don’t be afraid to fall in love with a bird. It’s perfectly legal in most states—except maybe Mississippi. I’m not asking you to do anything freaky. Just focus on a bird … for a few minutes, an hour or two—maybe those moments become days and weeks and … Next thing you know your life is birdful!
13) HAVE FUN & WATCH WITH A PURPOSE! Take it all in … boulders, butterflies, birds … understand at the end of the day your life list will be filled with much more than birds.
GROUP THINK: NEW NAMES FOR PLURAL BIRDS
A Hemorrhage of cardinals
red-staining the backyard
A Consideration, Council
or Congress of crows;
call them anything but murderers, please.
A Whir of hummingbirds
A Riff (or Mood) of any bird that’s blue
A Thicket of sparrows
A Mine of goldfinches
A Skulk of thrashers
A Cuddle of chickadees. (Cute is a definite field mark.)
A Thuggery of jaegars
A Piracy of skuas
A Crucifixion of shrikes
A Mattering of Black birds—
Lives ignored, hated and dissed.
How did darkness become so despised?
A Melody of thrushes
A Palette of painted buntings
An Audacity of wrens—
finding every crevice ever created
and singing loudest about the fact.
A Vomitus of vultures.
A Swarm of flycatchers—
Empidonax “spuh” be damned.
A Tide of shorebirds—
rising more than falling,
wishful thinking on past abundance;
knots, whimbrel, peeps, plovers, curlews
darkening salt marsh skies.
A Privilege of all birds white—
though it’s not their fault
for almost always being given the benefit of doubt or being
mostly respected; usually liked.
An Immigration of starlings.
loved to tears in distant murmuration
but deplored to legalized killing on the street.
Deprived of breath without penalty or cause.
A Herd of cowbirds. Given the gift of never parenting.
Evolutionary brilliance.
A Flurry of snowbirds;
juncos my grandma claimed she pitied
and threw them handfuls of grits.
A Wandering of warblers
An Envy of swallow-tailed kites
A Front of waterfowl
—forecasting gray winter days to come.
A Cache of nuthatches
A Wheeze of gnatcatchers
A Throne of kinglets (or court if you please).
A Missing of Carolina parakeets,
too smart for their own good.
An Echo of passenger pigeons
—billions dwindled to no
ne.
A Memory of ivory-bills
in praise of the Great Lord God
maybe not all gone.
An Inclusion of mixed migratory flocks,
hopefully integrated by choice
and not forced to co-mingle
in whatever gulfs they must cross.
Wondering what they would call themselves?
If there is disagreement over plumage color, wing bar width,
leg hue, call tone or habitat of origin?
How would they name us? Would the tables turn?
Am I a greater Southern Black-backed two-legged thing?
You perhaps a common White-fronted human being?
Someone else named after a passerine of respectable fame
or raptor of murderous infamy?
Here in gratitude of everyone there ever was—
Whatever the name.
A Love of birds. My collective label.
GLOSSARY
Anthropocene
The current depressing age of human-created and hyper-enhanced woe. Nature still reigns supreme though. See also Pandemic.
Bird
Worship-worthy, feather-bearing, winged beings, most of which fly. With abilities to sing in harmony with themselves, move by the millions in murmuration as a single entity and traverse hemispheres guided by stars, they are what humans would be if they could. See also Icarus.
Birder
Me.
Bohicket
A ten mile two-lane ribbon of asphalt black snake that stretches across John’s Island in Charleston, South Carolina. The Angel Oak, a huge kraken of a live oak, lives there. It carries the rich through poor places to live in luxury. Drive carefully or the Bohicket snake will crush you.
Canid
Four-legged things that are related to your pooch.
Sparrow Envy Page 4