Birds
The birds here are adept and singing. They sing like this:
a cry. It goes out from them and it is exchanged. Payment with the trees
that stand outside my house. Each aspen and walnut has it’s
own individual bird: and every bird is speaking
from the place I call “the low and templed silence.”
Stillness. Remorse. I acknowledge this: there is something more wounded
than the birds themselves. Before flight. Nighttime nearing. If you leave
them alone, sitting for too long, they starve a little. Then they get cold.
The thing about truth is it needs something. Perhaps, truly,
the birds themselves. Perhaps not; then again those steepled-churches
stand hard against the wind. Statues. Snow-covered houses; birds perched
against the wind. Trees shaking unruly
and wild in the dark. Irises have names because they summer early.
When the Screech Owl Kills the Songbird
When the screech owl kills the songbird not one whimper, not
one cry comes out from it. The songbird sings on and on, bliss for
bliss – by himself or amongst the others. They flock, or rather they nestle together
in the walnut tree. One bird beak touches the other. You might think:
oh, such compassion they must have for one another, such affection to touch this way.
But they're all pawns in this game, they gamble on one another's feathers –
over worms – over their sweetly sung songs. They can't imagine
this world without the walnut tree: each one hanging; brown
ornaments darkening in the sun. The little songbirds fattened and
entranced by the beauty of it all: shafts of light beaming upon them,
upon their nests, upon the naked baby birds. All of them hidden but
protected under. This too, is all a game. When the nighttime comes... when
the screech owl kills the songbird in the nighttime, a little sigh flies out from
it – the tiny body, alarmed but breathing last... And how you can
watch it all unfold, cinematic; the songbird yields, Oh! How he yields to the violence
of the screech owl. The screech owl knows the game. He sees the bliss, the woeful
bliss that causes one touch after another. He watches them in the daytime,
perhaps nearly jealous of
each songbird in the walnut tree. He is patient
and unfolding. The screech owl knows in his mind this: this is the right kind of
song, the right kind of music. The screech owl knows not
how to sing: for if he tried he could not produce
one note, not one hymn. He cares little for it. Instead he prefers to
listen in on them, in on all their blissful singing. Their music. He thinks: they
do not know, these fools, how sweet this music is to me. Instead he
whinnies and trills – his screeching in the night nightmarish and
daunting. This is his omen: his decree: his lamprophony – the
coming forth. The game. The gamble. A screech owl for all bets.
Maybe if you played it backwards for a little while, in slow moving
panels, you could see it for what it actually is: a sermon. This is
the real sermon on the mount. The story about the purest of heart:
who might you ask? When the screech owl kills the songbird a little
suffering goes out into the world – a little more pain, a little more broken;
only this time bloodied. This time sullen. And when the screech
owl kills the songbird both animals become the meeker part
of themselves: they are tied to it: the game. The part of the gamble
they must play. Both birds are in mourning, they grieve
over a small part of themselves:
the one who had to do it and the one it was done unto.
Don't you see? They grieve the bodies, these poor little spirits
kindled but also subdued – they both cry out for mercy:
they both cry out for shame.
Where is the peacemaker? The one who can settle
this? – Where is the kingdom,
the house seated beneath
the walnut tree?
Crane
In the hyssop garden somewhere near the edge of Eden there dwells a hunger where, sorely, every
living things bears it, but not as sorely as the grey-feathered crane,
who bends, no not bends, he curves, dips down his elongated spine and reaches in the garden for fish,
– no, not the kind with fins or gills,
the kind who dwell on the land. Like lizards bathing in the sunlight, day after day, not minding the
crane who finds them and picks them off one by one. Carnivorous crane.
Stretching in the hyssop garden and plucking off the lizards one by one. This consumption he does: day
after day, it's hypnotic. He feeds and feeds. And something about
his territory is convoluted or endearing to these kinds of fish: he's a kind of fishing rod. The kind that
stretches, no reaches far off in the soil, that is somehow so
close to Eden, no other animal dares to question him. He is dancing with them, those kinds of lizards
that slide or maybe they slither (shamefully) across the tall blades
of scattered grass, the slime or moss on top of stones, the way they hold – maybe for dear life –
onto the branches of hyssop trees. Those creatures cannot compare to
what this crane is doing: he is pertinent and engaging. Even the hyssop trees seems to shake when he
passes. One by one, those tiny lizards go down his wide-angular throat.
You could imagine some of them welcoming this crane – this wild an elegant accosting animal–
welcoming him near, welcoming their deaths. Some of them would be
pleased just to be near him. Just to touch his feathered body. To caress him. They may even imagine
briefly touching the curve of his beak or the red-tips on his head.
They are obsessed: all obsessed, you see? The lizards are scavengers, they don't deserve to live. They
pretend their slick-back bodies are meant for glory; but you will find
no glory in them, they are anxious and perhaps, unworthy. When they eat, they eat flies, the flies are
always buzzing about them. And when they become bored they eat
the shell of their own dead skin. They mate in the heat of the hyssop trees so close to the edge of Eden.
You see? The lizards are always hungry and wanting. But what for?
They are clueless. You will find no answers from them – only their hunger. And just as the crane is
about to pluck them off, they'd be hissing their tongues, clacking their jaws
out smiling as if to say, “See? His throat is that of the hyssop tree. The tree we've been waiting on, this
waiting almost eternal, gone on and on, on for so long.”
E. R. Vanett was born in South Bend, Indiana, and holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in English Literature from Indiana University. Vanett’s work has been previously published by the Oakland Arts Review and Retirement Plan. Vanett currently serves in the United States Army. She enjoys hiking in nature, taking photographs, painting with watercolors, and of course, writing poetry. Vanett plans to earn her MFA in Creative Writing in the fall this year.
