BIRDWATCH: Ducks on the Pond

Male bird plumage is the perfect fusion of function and style. I say it is conclusive evidence of godly Creation, sentient beings untroubled with the need for clothing, yet there they do go - arrayed in most compelling magnificence. We human designers must conclude our looking upon them with a humble moment, all fields of glory leveled.

Mandarin Duck pair, Franklin Canyon pond, photo by author

Wood Duck pair, Franklin Canyon pond, photo by author

I have seen a bird of paradise courtship dance and mating high in the trees above me in Indonesia, and I am fortunate that no choices must be made as to which of my bird sightings I cherish most.

download from Cornell University of Ornithology website,
used for educational purposes only

I'm glad I haven't had to travel as far - these three lord-love-a-duck critters seem to hang out in the pond at Franklin Canyon near our house most of the time.

BOOK REVIEW: A Little Life, by Hanya Yanigihara

I hesitated to choose this book.  The review warned of explicit and prolonged sexual abuse, but promised a kind of elevated experience. 

Jude, the main character, endures years of physical and sexual abuse, leaving an unusually gifted child to become an adult with recurring emotional trauma that he struggles with on a minute-by-minute basis. Making of this plot a very long and repetitive novel, which, like "Brooklyn", left me feeling muddied and useless.

I don't know how I can go on, thinking of the shattering destruction of so many millions of human souls. How do THEY go on?  

Most of all, one of my cherished canards, that the experience of natural beauty compensates fully for life's injuries, is found useless.

I didn't come away from this book with any sense of literary style or greatness, but with an enlarged perspective on the difficulty and impossibility of repairing a ruined child. I already knew that.

It's intriguing to me that Jude retains so many loyal friends.  I think that unrealistic, that more likely he would have been an isolate, sinking sooner into madness than he does.

I don't know to whom to recommend this book. Therapists already know it all, and the rest of us have read books and seen films like this already. Think of "Room", of Holocaust narratives, of "The Railway Man".

Maybe this is ultimate example of the genre, and that is a reason.

BIRD WATCHING: The Cedar Waxwings are here again. And Northern Flickers, too.

  

Some years, I hear a high keening sound in the back yard, strange, insistent, and electronic, and then I  realize the Cedar Waxwings are passing through.  They love to light upon  my neighbor's tall old liquidambar  tree, on bare branches high up which offer a sociable spot to gather in early morning and mid-afternoon.  

I did not see them last year, though attending to their possibility, and missed their stopover in our old trees, the peculiar tone penetrating my mind, continuing on and on.   I love to think of the journey they make to our southwestern location, leaving the snowy cold north for a time. 

They are handsome large birds, the crest on the head and the sharp dark eyestripe making them look like hipsters.  They are beautifully detailed, with a red stripe on the wings and tail, and a delicately shaded pale yellow stomach.  

I have seen a pair of Northern Flickers, too, another lovely large bird with a striking black "bib" on its chest. The underparts of the tail feathers and some wing feathers are a brilliant yellow-orange. 

POEM: Regarding the Incident at Malheur Wildlife Refuge

The Place called Refuge

The refuge they took – it’s called the Malheur.

Note the name matches their countenances dour.

Well chosen!  For the freedom they find is bitter there

The dissonance more than their souls can bear.

Within them chthonic furies rage

Pseudo-individualists trapped and caged.

The myths of plenty and endless vistas

Before them now but receding distance.

Sage grouse run from their arrogant stance

Give no more performances of passionate dance.

What DO they want to accomplish out there?

Will they be stewards?  The land needs care.

They live sickened hours and final days

And slam all doors that lead out of the maze.

Do not grant them that empty place

It’s already fully a sacred space.

Instead fill their lives with visionary     grace.