Henri Rousseau, “The Virgin Forest”
Sports Saturday
I don’t know if bird watching is a sport or not, but it’s the activity that my recently deceased father engaged in for exercise. Although from his childhood he was nearly blind in one eye and couldn’t look straight up without experiencing vertigo, he was an excellent birder and just needed the tiniest flash of movement to identify what he was seeing.
He tried to interest his sons in the activity but none of us followed in his footsteps. Because I wanted to be like him in every possible way (I was the eldest), I made a valiant effort, getting up early in the morning to accompany him. I particularly remember early spring mornings, the sun barely up and the entire forest throbbing with birdsong.
Occasionally I got a sense of the magic, and I remember our delight when, this time in the early evening, we actually tracked two whippoorwills by their calls and saw both of them. I also remember, just a few years ago when we were visiting Yellowstone, sharing his joy as, for the first time in our lives, we saw an American dipper hopping beneath a waterfall.
In mythology, birds are often symbols of the journey between life and death. I became utterly convinced, after my oldest son died, that an osprey I saw whenever I visited the spot where he drowned was somehow connected with him. (It would sit in a tree watching me for however long I was there for a month after the event. I’ve never seen an osprey behave that way since.) Lucille Clifton in one of her poems talks about how there was an explosion of birds outside her window the moment that her husband died. So papa, if there’s any good birding to be had where you are now, I know you will take full advantage.
Here’s a Pablo Neruda poem in memory of my father’s bird watching. I like how the Chilean poet talks about the coolness and wetness of the early morning and of the “sacred conversations” going on all around him:
Ode To Bird Watching
Now
Let’s look for birds!
The tall iron branches
in the forest,
The dense
fertility on the ground.
The world
is wet.
A dewdrop or raindrop
shines,
a diminutive star
among the leaves.
The morning time
mother earth
is cool.
The air
is like a river
which shakes
the silence.
It smells of rosemary,
of space
and roots.
Overhead,
a crazy song.
It’s a bird.
How
out of its throat
smaller than a finger
can there fall the waters
of its song?
Luminous ease!
Invisible
power
torrent
of music
in the leaves.
Sacred conversations!
Clean and fresh washed
is this
day resounding
like a green dulcimer.
I bury
my shoes
in the mud,
jump over rivulets.
A thorn
bites me and a gust
of air like a crystal
wave
splits up inside my chest.
Where
are the birds?
Maybe it was
that
rustling in the foliage
or that fleeting pellet
of brown velvet
or that displaced
perfume? That
leaf that let loose cinnamon smell—
was that a bird?
That dust
from an irritated magnolia
or that fruit
which fell with a thump –
was that a flight?
Oh, invisible little
critters
birds of the devil
with their ringing
with their useless feathers.
I only want
to caress them,
to see them resplendent.
I don’t want
to see under glass
the embalmed lightning.
I want to see them living.
I want to touch their gloves
of real hide,
which they never forget in
the branches
and to converse with
them
sitting on my shoulders
although they may leave
me like certain statues
undeservedly whitewashed.
Impossible.
You can’t touch them.
You can hear them
like a heavenly
rustle or movement.
They converse
with precision.
They repeat
their observations.
They brag
of how much they do.
They comment
on everything that exists.
They learn
certain sciences
like hydrography.
and by a sure science
they know
where there are harvests
of grain.
— Translated by Jodey Bateman
