BIRDS, CHAPTER 2

A few days ago, I wrote a blog about a variety of birds splashing in clean water that my friend, Dr. Victoria Sullivan, had put in the bird bath in the front yard. She kept filling the bath with water from the reverse osmosis filtered water tap in the kitchen, but yesterday she decided to fill the bath via the garden hose as the process for filling was so much easier. But the result wasn’t the same! To our surprise, no birds appeared for their morning bath. We waited, checking hourly for the appearance of our feathered friends. By afternoon, we decided to change the bath, filling it with purified water again. Voila! One by one, the sparrows, cardinals, catbirds, nuthatch, titmouse and other small species took turns splashing in the bird bath until supper time, then departed before dusk for their home in the clump of blackberry bushes by the drive.

“How did they know that the water was purified?” I asked Vickie.

“Maybe those small heads have more brain power than humans think they have.”

“I guess because they live here at Sewanee, the bastion of elitism, they think they’re entitled to pure water.”

“Or maybe they’re just spoiled for me and my ministrations,” Vickie concluded.

Dr. Sullivan is a botanist, not an ornithologist, so I consulted my old friend, Google, and the only answer that made sense for me was a simple one: birds don’t like the additives in ordinary tap water. In fact, some bird lovers relate that they’ve seen birds drinking from mud puddles before they’d drink from bird baths filled with ordinary tap water. Think of it – chlorine, fluoride, and other chemicals pollute water that even birds disdain; in fact, many of them become ill from drinking tap water. Unfortunately, there’s no water control board in the bird world, so they’re on their own about finding good water sources.

There are many reasons for humans to watch the behavior of birds, including, it seems, that of learning good health habits. One cardinal was so grateful for the return of purified water, he dared to walk up to the herb bed by the front door and peek in. He was accompanied by a catbird who looked as if she wanted to engage in a flirtation, but the cardinal wasn’t playing. When the catbird turned her head, the cardinal lifted wing and flew off.

“If St. Francis of Assisi could get birds to sit on his shoulders, perhaps we have a chance to befriend them,” I told Vickie.

The reply to this was downright insulting. “But he was a person who had given up all the luxuries of this world, and those birds sensed his holiness.”

“I guess his stance of poverty means no allowances for purified water,” I said dejectedly.

I've written many bird poems, most of them about crows and grackles, but here’s an old “snippet” (as distinct from a full-bodied poem) from A Moment Seized that’s a bit more inclusive. It’s entitled “Spring Feathers”:

“Mockingbird shrieks in the spring air

making a stand-off with a plump jay,

too much the warrior in his incaution.

A brief fight and they glide away,

reminders of fleeting friendship.

In their tiny brains spring is a code,

a minute groove in mockingbird, robin, sparrow

foretelling the resurrection—

light out of shadow,

bloom out of folded bud,

sooth in the heart of a pistil,

the brief flurry of feather.”

Glasswork of Painted Bunting by Karen Bourque, glass artist, Church Point, Louisiana. Photographed by Dr. Victoria Sullivan as it hangs in a window of our Sewanee house.  

LIFELINES

I've known for some time that Pinyon Publishing had scheduled the publication of the work of one of my favorite Pinyon poets, Michael Miller. Today, I received a copy of Lifelines, Miller's newest book of poetry, and the book is all that I expected to be—an ardent and profound collection of poems that can be read quickly because there is an immediacy and a strong flow of language in his work. 

The poems probe the serious subject of mortality, love, marriage, and family, touching on the truth with good-humored intensity and expressing wisdom gained from past losses, as well as resilience in the face of fierce fear. I read aloud most of the poetry to a friend, and she agreed that Miller is a major poet who has captured the great themes of poetry with poignance and grace while conveying the suffering and loss inevitable in the human condition.

"Hooks and Eyes" is one of the eminent poems in the section of Lifelines devoted to family relationships. It is a poem about the author's grandmother, a moving and ironic piece that recalls the era when polio threatened the American family: "Do you want to be in an iron lung?"/My grandmother asked,/Ordering me to wash my hands/As that crippling disease/Spread like the war in Europe./Fear became my bullying foe,/Stalking me through summer,/Dragging its steel braces/With black leather straps..." The imagery in the last three lines startles the reader with its awful threat, and I shuddered at the remembrance of one awful summer when the disease struck a friend of the family in hot, swampy Louisiana where diseases often fester during sultry weather. Miller rescues the reader from further awfulness with a cameo of his grandmother in the second part of the poem: "Through the crack in the door/I watched my grandmother adjust/Her pendulous breasts inside the corset./I wanted to pull the long laces/Through the hooks and eyes,/To feel it snug around my body." Those clean, simple lines enfold the reader with the author's deep-felt affection for his grandparent and show his ability to express that affinity without the mawkishness of a less-disciplined poet.

Simplicity and clarity are paramount in Miller's lyrics and are evident in the brief depiction of an obviously "special" newspaper carrier. In "Lighting The Way," Miller writes: "Headlights, twenty yards behind him,/Brighten the tree-lined street/Where he walks briskly at four a.m./Tossing The Berkshire Gazette/Onto the doorways of dark houses/With only his mother lighting the way./On his fortieth birthday he insisted/He would do it alone; his mother let him./From the window I watched/His chunky body in shorts, his flashlight/Lighting the pines, the porches./In his Red Sox's T-shirt/He lumbered forward as if to declare:/I have a life, I have a good life,/I am Alvin Kipple delivering your papers." The tone of the poem and description of the carrier evoke moving images of Forest Gump who captured the sympathies of moviegoers in the film of that name. "Lighting the Way" is the poet's clear-eyed view of a person with limited capabilities who has the determination to work and live a dignified life.

Miller is a master at expressing the ambivalent feelings of married couples, and in the poem "A Lasting Marriage," he again explores uncomfortable aspects of the married state, providing a wise reflection about the depth of long-term commitments: "Now we love deeper, deeper/Than the rage that never crossed/The invisible border into violence./Our lips touch with a softness/Of petals opening into another spring./And although we are old/We join with the half-life/Of an unforgotten passion,/The flow between us/Passing over every stone."

Michael Miller's gifts of observation and psychological acuity have provided readers with unforgettable lyrics about the frustrations of life and the inner changes that take place within humans. He has imbued them with a dignity that creates significant emotional responses in all who search for "lifelines." 

As I said earlier, Lifelines is all that I expected it to be—another triumph from Miller's pen and from the poetry corner of Pinyon Publishing. The beautiful cover art of Lifelines was done by Susan Elliott who designs all of Pinyon's book covers.

Miller's poetry has appeared in The Sewanee Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, Raritan, Pinyon Review, and The Yale Review. His poem entitled "The Different War" was the 2014 First Prize winner of the W.B. Yeats Society Poetry Award.  He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.  

Lifelines is available from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403.