The Birds I Have Become
by Janay Garrick
“Birds are sometimes found away from their regular ranges in areas not indicated on maps.”
The bread is lifted up. A flock of Parisian sparrows flock to the feeder—a would-be She-preacher, a blond-headed, black-crowned sparrow. They flock to her right hand, beak her flesh; her crown and wrist their perch. Montmartre—white and round-shouldered, weeps in the background. The saints march in. The artists with their oil and water palettes, the bakers with their baguettes, the stone street with its cobbled, wet feet. Montmartre blinks hard and remembers. She sighs red. She sighs a wall of stones, and remembers the stone of stumbling and offense, the Rock of antiquity.
In Freetown: I became a snowy egret—aluminum-boned and bright white. A little bit of yellow boot and purple heart. A little bit of fight and flight. Shallow bay and swamp water.
In Nairobi I became a lilac-breasted roller—blue-bellied and sapphire-tipped. I rocked orphans, and raised silver dollars for wells of water. The people thirst, I said to anyone who would listen. I longed to water the earth with my tears, I longed to effect justice at the gate. I stomped the children’s refrain, God is good, all the time, for that is his nature.
To the building up and to the tearing down, to the life of the pilgrim and wayfarer, her friends lift their crystal glasses. I have no home, she says. You are my home. To courts of varying kinds she travels, courts of the Lord and courts of law, courts of mud and of justice, of courting and of failed courtship. The life of the cliff swallow, swallowed up.
“For all the world’s a pond, and you are a swan,” the boy spoke long ago of rose and water, red petal and thorn, not knowing: that was never me. A full tilt trumpeter swan. Spotless white feather-light—happily mated for life—content with one quiet river or pond. I wish I could say that used to be me. Her swim, I have avoided, and longed for, my entire life.
A nectar and torpor queen, the ruby-throated hummingbird is the secret and quiet queen of all the pond. Daily, I turn up good as dead. Too long in fight-and-flight, I crash. If no predator hawks me, I wake, and nectar at the red salvia. I save, sighs the salvia. Tanked with tea and sugar, I rope the vertical, spiraling toward the golden hour. Do it again, the onlookers say. Rise! (My father once buried a ruby throat in Palm Desert, thinking her dead. We mistake stillness for death and waking for life.) An aerial forager, I feed on the wing. Blink, you miss me. Close your eyes, you hear only the whir of wings—wisdom from the throats of flowers. I am a Sophian song, a rubied resurrection.
“Birds are sometimes found away from their regular ranges in areas not indicated on maps.”
The bread is lifted up. A flock of Parisian sparrows flock to the feeder—a would-be She-preacher, a blond-headed, black-crowned sparrow. They flock to her right hand, beak her flesh; her crown and wrist their perch. Montmartre—white and round-shouldered, weeps in the background. The saints march in. The artists with their oil and water palettes, the bakers with their baguettes, the stone street with its cobbled, wet feet. Montmartre blinks hard and remembers. She sighs red. She sighs a wall of stones, and remembers the stone of stumbling and offense, the Rock of antiquity.
In Freetown: I became a snowy egret—aluminum-boned and bright white. A little bit of yellow boot and purple heart. A little bit of fight and flight. Shallow bay and swamp water.
In Nairobi I became a lilac-breasted roller—blue-bellied and sapphire-tipped. I rocked orphans, and raised silver dollars for wells of water. The people thirst, I said to anyone who would listen. I longed to water the earth with my tears, I longed to effect justice at the gate. I stomped the children’s refrain, God is good, all the time, for that is his nature.
To the building up and to the tearing down, to the life of the pilgrim and wayfarer, her friends lift their crystal glasses. I have no home, she says. You are my home. To courts of varying kinds she travels, courts of the Lord and courts of law, courts of mud and of justice, of courting and of failed courtship. The life of the cliff swallow, swallowed up.
“For all the world’s a pond, and you are a swan,” the boy spoke long ago of rose and water, red petal and thorn, not knowing: that was never me. A full tilt trumpeter swan. Spotless white feather-light—happily mated for life—content with one quiet river or pond. I wish I could say that used to be me. Her swim, I have avoided, and longed for, my entire life.
A nectar and torpor queen, the ruby-throated hummingbird is the secret and quiet queen of all the pond. Daily, I turn up good as dead. Too long in fight-and-flight, I crash. If no predator hawks me, I wake, and nectar at the red salvia. I save, sighs the salvia. Tanked with tea and sugar, I rope the vertical, spiraling toward the golden hour. Do it again, the onlookers say. Rise! (My father once buried a ruby throat in Palm Desert, thinking her dead. We mistake stillness for death and waking for life.) An aerial forager, I feed on the wing. Blink, you miss me. Close your eyes, you hear only the whir of wings—wisdom from the throats of flowers. I am a Sophian song, a rubied resurrection.