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Sitting on the front steps, I looked down and saw a feather. We’ve had some thunderstorms lately, and it looked a bit like it had been through the storms— somewhat bedraggled, and lying on the limestone pavement partly under one of the boxwoods that grow at the front of the house, as if blown there by the wind. |
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That’s the second time in a week that I’ve found a feather in the yard. The other one was tiny and perfect, with a hint of iridescent color, but when I looked for it today it was gone. Blown away by the storms, no doubt. Finding the second feather reminded me that I’ve been noticing the birds lately. In our city neighborhood, we mostly have what seasoned birdwatchers call LBB’s—“little brown birds.” In other words, mixed flocks of small, fairly nondescript birds—sparrows, finches, occasional wrens. We do get a few bright red cardinals and a few bright yellow and black goldfinches—but we get lots and lots of LBB’s. They’re not flashy, not spectacular, not attention-grabbing. Technically, they’re songbirds, but their songs are not particularly melodious--mostly just twitters and chirps. Both visually and aurally, they’re usually just part of the background to city life. Usually. But not always. Twice a day, gloriously, they rise up out of the background of street-level life and soar. It happens at dawn and again at sunset. Often it’s one of the first sights I see out my bedroom windows when I wake up in the morning: huge flocks of LBB’s racing across the sky, wheeling in great circles and arcs, plunging through the dawn air in what looks like ecstatic joy. They’re not going anywhere. They stay right within an area stretching from the properties across the alley from us to the ones across the street from us, and no wider than a lot or two on either side of us. So whatever it is they’re doing, it isn’t just about getting from Point A to Point B. They do it again at sunset, when the light slides down to about the same level it is at dawn. To me it looks like pure joy—a communal celebration of the goodness of light and air and having wings and being a bird. I think of it as the bird version of morning and evening prayer. And I wonder what my own life would be like if I prayed so ecstatically every morning and evening—so filled with gratitude and sheer delight at the incredible gift of being here, in this world, at this time, and being who I am. What would our city be like, what would our world be like, if all human beings prayed this way—the way I imagine the birds pray?
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