Birds (Three Stories)

Bird # 1: Clare's Hawk


The adjacent image is a selection from the text, The Poetry of Earth, New York: Atheneum Press, 1966. This selection pictured here (click to open larger copy) is from the "Nature Notes" of 19th century, rural English (no, not Irish) poet John Clare. Clare's first book of poems, Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery, was published in 1920 by John Taylor, also a publisher of Keats. An article and readings of one of his most remembered poems, "I Am" can be found at The Atlantic's Soundings page. More Clare poems can be found at The Poetry Foundation including one of my favorites, "The Skylark." Sadly, Clare spent the last twenty years of his life in an asylum, which was the location of his death in 1864.


Clare's "Nature Notes" (to my knowledge and the aid of Jonathan Bate's biography of Clare) were from his personal journal around the year 1824. In this passage from the journal, which contains little punctuation, variant spellings, and the grammar of rural speech, Clare tells the story of a particular hawk that he describes saying: "not quite so large as the sparrow hawk their wings & back feathers was of a red brown color sheathed wi black their tails was long & barred with black & their breasts was of a lighter color & spotted their eyes was large & of a dark piercing blue their beaks was very much hooked with a sharp projecting swell in the top mandible ..." Clare's striking description of the birds is interesting in both its knowledgible birder's detail and its awkward, almost manic, syntax.  


However, what is most interesting in this passage from the journals is what comes next:

Clare's depiction of the relationship between the hawk and himself is quite compelling in that the hawk is both interested in and seemingly wary of Clare, in the end both are for good reason: Clare is exceedingly kind to the bird and yet it is the friendship with Clare that leads to the bird's demise. One can see in passages such as the above evidence of both Clare's potential as a different sort of English Romantic poet and his eventual mental disintegration and ultimate committing to an asylum.

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Bird # 2: St. Benedict's Raven

According to St. Gregory's Dialogues, Book II, Italian monk, later to be known as St. Benedict, writer of The Rule of St. Benedict, a raven that frequented the cave where Benedict lived, was charged by Benedict to remove a loaf of poisoned bread and take it "where it cannot be found." Eventually the bird did as he was told and returned. There is another story in which the bird rids the cave of a chalice of poisoned wine. Here again, a bird and an eccentric man are friendly and  engaged in a form of communication--and in both cases these hermetic men leave a written legacy behind them after their cloistered deaths.

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Bird # 3: Dad?

My father was an amateur birder, very amateur. In fact, actually, he liked looking at birds, owned binoculars (I now own them), and several bird-books (those are mine now too). He never went on outings, took notes, or did extensive research, but he passed on to me a real respect and interest in the feathered flyers of our neighborhood. In fact, just today during dinner I located our neighbor, a still-red male cardinal perched in one of the highest branches of the tallest tree in our back yard. I took a picture and made my oldest son look for him too; he found him more quickly than I thought he would. 

I do this a lot: look for birds. 

My dad died, fairly young (63), in 1995. I have been looking for him ever since: in dreams, in pictures, in letters, in hidden manuscripts in desk drawers ( I did find one once.). But mostly in birds. Interestingly, since January, I have had several interesting bird related experiences, three of which have involved bald eagles that are currently nesting North of Lawrence. 

The first had just captured a meal on the east side of 59 highway and allowed me to pull my car to the side of the road and watch him secure the prey, spread his wings, and fly, low above a still snow-glazed stubblefield before rising quickly to a perch in a far cottonwood. 

The second eagle was noticed by one of my creative writing students during class one afternoon flying circles above Lawrence High School, a very odd and rare sight that far into town. 

The third experience was a couple of weeks ago on my morning commute, again on 59 highway, heading south towards Lawrence and the eagle swooped across in front of my car and behind me, slowly gliding as I pulled the car over and turned around to follow him. He landed in a bare maple on the east side of the highway. There was a convenient farmers drive-in that allowed me to pull my car in off the highway and watch him sitting there in the tree, the still-winter sun rising, nearly white, behind the tree and above the pasture that stretched for miles to that place on the horizon where, eventually my two rivers (The Missouri and the Kaw) finally meet.

Though I spend a lot of time, alone, in my movable cell of a car, I am no eccentric, ascetic monk, and I have most of my sanity, most agree, but there is something about the continual connection that I feel with these birds that seems to to suggest that their closeness to me is important. That they carry some meaning or message that might just be the same thing that Clare and Benedict found in their birds and that I am always looking for in little legacies my father left behind. 

Maybe I am little more crazy that I give myself credit for. For now, I'm not too afraid, and I'm going to keep reading the bird signs that flutter and fly my way.