June 11, 2012

Everything is up early this morning!  The birds are going about making song and calling out, the cicadas are whirrin' an' chirrin' since it's nearly 80 degrees already, even at this hour.  The air is shifting around through the leaves and the early cobalt color of the sky has faded to a hazy white with some brighter yellow east over the bay.  That little group of dogs, four of them, two large and two small, just rounded the corner, trotting along, heads held high, tails beating the air, just looking around.  They remind me of the group of bicyclers that occasionally comes by early on the weekends, two guys and two ladies usually riding slowly, all talking together, just out enjoying the morning.

Some mornings things are not what they seem, the little bird with the big voice is not a sparrow but a titmouse, the gray I thought was the cat turned out to be a raccoon trundling along the edge of the cane, the shadow that caught my eye . . . a squirrel, rather two squirrels coming down I think to drink.  And when I was looking for a poem, this poem turned out not to be what I thought it was, or . . . was it? (sometimes I cant tell if I pick the poem or the poem picks me)

Aliens

When they appeared on the terrace soon after daybreak
high above the sea with the tide far out I thought at first
they were sparrows which by now seen to have found their way everywhere
following us at the own small distances arguing over
pieces of our shadows to take up into their brief flights
eluding our attention by seeming unremarkable
quick instantaneous beyond our grasp as they are in themselves
complete lives flashing flashing from the beginning each eye bearing
the beginning in its dusty head and even their voices
seemed to be at first the chatter of sparrows half small talk half bickering
but no when I looked more closely they were linnets the brilliant
relatives the wanderers out of another part of the story
with their head the colors of the end of days and that unsoundable
gift for high delicate headlong singing that has rung
even out of vendors' cages when the morning light has touched them

W. S. Merwin

I don't believe we are in the range for linnets, they seem to be European, or Asian, or North African, but the linnet's song has been extolled in several famous poems and they were often kept in cages for their lovely singing.  They are grayish or perhaps brownish but the males in the spring have russet breasts and on their heads, the color of sunset.  What tickled me, when I looked them up, is their scientific name Carduelis cannabina and yes, that's just what it sounds like.  They were known for eating the seed from the hemp plant, perhaps that's what made them sing so happily! <chuckle> And the common name linnet comes from their fondness for flax seed as well.  So, I am not the only one for whom things are not what they seem, and knowing that Merwin has lived for years in Hawaii the linnet would be alien to that environment.  Still when I started reading the poem, I was not thinking of birds but what I guess is more commonly thought of when you read the word aliens, those that are not of this planet, far from home, or in a strange place.  Yet, the linnets were obviously strangers to that place, telling their own story in song far from their usual haunts.  William Wordsworth mentions them in his poem The Tables Turned:

"Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife:

Come, hear the woodland linnet,

How sweet his music! on my life,

There's more of wisdom in it."

I know those cheerful songs I hear nearly every morning sure seem to be if not wise at least happy in their moment, and I like books as well, so I can have the best of all the worlds, both books and poems, and the songs of so many birds. 

May you have surprises today, pleasant ones, when something common turns into something extraordinary!