Carolina wren and more Mary Oliver

Here’s a true story: The past two nights, I’ve slept in a hammock on the back deck. This morning and yesterday morning, a little bird came to visit. It lit for a moment on me the first morning, waking me up. I moved when I felt something on my shoulder. Within minutes, it came back twice and landed on the hammock. This morning it landed at the end of the hammock and watched me for a moment. Then it made three skillful hops along the edge of the hammock until it was RIGHT NEXT TO MY FACE. Like an inch or two away. Then it flew to the ping pong table where it continued to observe me. I am in love. I took a phone pic of it when it was on the ping pong table and sent to a friend to identify: Carolina wren. I’ve seen it many times on the railing of the back deck. It sings the prettiest song. 

And now that I love it, I feel mild panic because I don’t want any harm to come to it. “Maybe I shouldn’t let the cat outside anymore,” was my first thought. My cat is old and overweight and has never caught anything other than one cricket (which was probably also old and overweight). She’s never even shown interest my backyard chickens, which have lived with us for over a year now. But the fear is real. 

Update: The above was written last week. A few days after the intimate encounter with the wren, I found a dead Carolina wren near my chicken coop. Since then I haven’t seen the wren that sang regularly on the railing of the back deck just outside my kitchen window. I’m still processing this. I dug a hole near the coop and buried the wren, which seemed freshly dead but still covered in ants. These are things that happen, but I wonder what actions of mine could have caused this death. I hate Round-up, but I use it on poison ivy because I’m so dreadfully allergic to the stuff. I used it last week on a small crop that suddenly appeared in the yard. I thought I had eradicated most of it when I moved in two years ago. Also last week, my neighbor was carrying a can of Raid, complaining about ants in his yard. Could the bird have eaten some Raided ants? 

I don’t want its death to be for naught, so I’m going to do some research and I WILL find another way to get rid of poison ivy if I contributed to that little songbird’s death. Coming up out of an intense depression, I’m also a bit selfishly determined to not let guilt send me spiraling back down. This is an appropriate time for me to dig into my new practice of self-compassion. I just don’t want it to be an excuse, though, so along with the forgiving of myself, I will also be dedicated to good change if needed. And of course, Mary Oliver has a poem that works some healing magic into the wound: 

I will try 

I will try. 

I will step from the house to see what I see 

and hear and I will praise it. 

I did not come into this world 

to be comforted. 

I came, like red bird, to sing. 

But I’m not red bird, with his head-mop of flame 

and the red triangle of his mouth 

full of tongue and whistles, 

but a woman whose love has vanished, 

who thinks now, too much, of roots 

and the dark places 

where everything is simply holding on. 

But this too, I believe, is a place 

where God is keeping watch 

until we rise, and step forth again and – 

 but wait. Be still. Listen! 

Is it red bird? Or something 

inside myself, singing?

Rita Dove and happiness

This morning while on a walk I smelled so deeply of a mimosa flower that the whimsical petal strands tickled the inside of my nose. I saw half a dozen bumblebees stumble clumsily through those same flowers, their big, bouncy bodies tumbling headfirst into feathery pink bliss.

I ate a dozen wild blackberries warm straight from the blackberry bush. Darting blue birds (not bluebirds, perhaps blue buntings?) flashed brilliant in energetic bursts. The crows convening on the sidewalk parted to let me pass, but not without significant vocal commentary. 

There was plenty more, of course: the crayon-box variety of wild flowers; the rise-and-fall, buzz-and-hum symphony of insects; the miracle of a star 92 million miles away warming my bare arms; the “weeds” whose resilience and ingenuity found a way to thrive in a sidewalk crack; my own body strong and capable of walking small hills on a Tennessee July morning. 

See, I KNOW there is every good reason to be grateful and see beauty in this world. And I AM grateful. And I DO see. But I also struggle with a sporadic darkness that can grip so fiercely it makes existence feel excruciating. And though this is my truth, it makes me feel silly and dramatic, so I keep quiet about it for the most part. Lately, I am existing in a place much brighter than I thought possible these past few years. In fact, there was a time when the following Rita Dove poem spoke clearly to the limits of my hopefulness. I am surprised by a new hope (though still tremulous, still cautious) that can imagine happiness as deep, full and complete.

“Sonnet” by Rita Dove

Nothing can console me. You may bring silk

to make skin sigh, dispense yellow roses

in the manner of ripened dignitaries.

You can tell me repeatedly 

I am unbearable (and I know this):

still, nothing turns the gold to corn,

nothing is sweet to the truth crushing in.

I’ll not ask for the impossible;

one learns to walk by walking.

In time I’ll forget this empty brimming,

I may laugh again at

a bird, perhaps, chucking the nest – 

but it will not be happiness

for I have known that.