Birdsong

On Saturday, a dead bird lay somewhere between the front door and the coral tree in my garden. It wasn't a muscular crow or a small black mynah, nor was it an arrestingly beautiful sort of bird. It was unusual though; I'd seen tiny yellow birds darting about the neighborhood before, but never a green one before. My bird - in less than a minute, I'd already grown a sense of responsibility towards it - had dark green and gray feathers, though the ones on its head were snow-white. I'd like to think that when it was alive, its feathers were shiny and glinting in the sun. Like a fallen gladiator, now it was a still, dark shape among the bright red petals of the coral flowers on the ground.

Despite it being one of the least pleasant tasks I could ever wish for on a Saturday morning, I had to remove it before any stray cat came by to stake its claim. As it was, a trail of industrious ants were already on the scene. Who knows what they'd already taken. The eyes, maybe. I shuddered at the thought of picking up a dead body, even if it wasn't large or heavy. Even if it was just a bird that I'd never seen before till that morning.

I couldn't decide which made me more uneasy - the physical presence of this dead weight or the awful thought that the life had gone from a creature that had always made me think of joy and journeys and freedom. It was just a bird, someone might say, but it had once breathed and eaten and drank of this world, and though I had seen an unusual number of deaths in my youth, mortality and death and all the permanence linked to it have yet to become any easier to accept.

I was thirteen when I first touched a dead body. My aunt was 18 when she died of an aneurysm. I was at the hospital the morning they took her off the life support machine, and though I knew her body was still warm after she was declared dead, I was afraid to touch her. Because I'd grown up with her, seen her laugh, heard her sing, let her tickle me till I teared, and I couldn't quite believe that her vibrant spirit was gone from her, and her body, so warm and familiar beside mine when I was a child, would soon grow cold and then be taken away from us forever. I lay only a finger on her forearm for a second, and then I walked away from her, ashamed and certain that I never wanted to touch a dead body of someone I loved if I could help it. I didn't want to remember that instant of knowledge, the tangible proof that the life had gone from her, sensed through mere layers of skin, mine and hers.

But I still remember it, and I did again when I felt the weight of the bird as I attempted to push it into a bag. I was using a rolled-up newspaper, which proved too large and clumsy, so I used a slipper, and even then, despite the lack of contact, I could feel the bird's sinking deadness through the tips of my fingers, and I had to walk away several times, leaving the body half in and half out of the bag, and feathers falling away from the bird's wings in all directions. Finally, I returned, inhaled deeply, heaved it into the bag as far as I could, and pulled the bag up so the body would fall to the bottom.

As I tied the bag, I wondered if the bird was on its way home to a nest somewhere in the neighborhood, or if it was on its way out to look for breakfast, or maybe it was leaving its nest in search of a better one someplace else. I'd like to think it was out on a new journey, but that it wasn't meant to be, and that if there were a heaven for animals, then it was in a far better place now, where the skies are endless, worms are plentiful, and trees are tall and lush and perfect for building nests.

Back in my study, I pulled out three songs that use birds as metaphors, very good metaphors. I listened to them and thought of real birds - black birds, blue birds, and a green bird - and also of the people who yearn to be like them, to go off on long journeys, to leave a place forever, who fail to do so but still dream that they can.

Black Winged Bird - by Nina Persson

Homebird - by Brian Kennedy

Bye Bye Blackbird - by The History Boys; they sing it for a beloved but often misunderstood teacher who finally left on a journey of his own.

Posted by Monoceros at February 5, 2008 6:15 PM