March 19, 2012

In the darkness, a single bird awake, making song, greeting the day not yet in evidence.  What makes that one bird sing its song before light, before the hour that raises the sun?  I have heard the song, and wondered at it.  Perhaps it's the early bird, and has gotten the worm already and cannot wait to tell the world how clever it is.  Perhaps it is lonely and seeks to comfort itself in the small hour.  Perhaps it has come home from a long journey and is glad to be here, even in the dark.  Perhaps it has found love, and its heart is too full for silence.  Whatever makes it sing at this hour, it makes me smile to listen to it, to hear in this otherwise silent dark, the sound of one creature, glad to be alive and telling its story to the world.

Bird

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day.
The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;
I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.

Pablo Neruda

There is a small bird on fire out there, on fire to bring on the day, sitting there in a shower of pollen that is everywhere thick as rain.   I am imagining the light, the trees, the wind, the place where it is singing, the shining water that is the bay at rest, the details so familiar to me, one more morning, a gift of this day, unwrapped by song.