Wire to Wire

Mountain Bluebird, wings beating time, follows the wire down the line. Her flight, a path that plies just above the barbs with which (in our pedestrian desire) we strive to set apart, cedar from silage; sweet corn from forest mosses; Nature from what we nurture: Untamed darkling wood, ungovernable rocks and rills from cows and fields in crop or fallow as they should. We divide. But when it comes to Mountain Bluebirds, Temperance on the vine, we consign what Bluebird seeks to find, nest boxes, arranged every twenty poles like pulses like hollows of the human heart.

Bluebird has come to depend upon our hand this to provide. Vindictive as we are against what is unkempt, our dread, our fell hand bringing the woods to their knees with two-man saw and chain saw. But insects still abound in the clearing and beyond at the green edge of what survives. And Bluebirds thrive.

Bluebird at the cross fence convenes with caution. First to the bleached twig with its empty pinecone. Then to the twisted pair of tines, shining, galvanized against weather sure to arrive. Though pressed by shortness of season, Bluebird hesitates. In her beak are beetles, cracked fluorescein green and crushed violet blue (though their legs and sometimes wings motor on in dumb refusal to the truth). She waits. Then comes to rest on a lichen-crusted tree, gray and yellow-green, unintended compliment to her cyan-washed Cerulean. She pauses. But now her Significant Other stands nearby, her guard and her decoy (Her muted hues a non-compete against his feathered lightning). Like a bolt from the blue he grabs that sprig of mullein just off to the side, it sways as he lands, his tail spread wide. He stretches his wings. Surveys the scene three-sixty degrees and while the world eyes the bright light of him… quick to the nest, she tips in.

Only two babies inside but they make quick work of the parcel she brings. No murmurings of motherhood (work is all she sees in them). Nor has she come for adult conversation: Through all her going, and coming, not one small word between her and him. She exits unceremoniously. He watches, his interest his only admonition. Fending off from the lip she launches into thin blue air, that collect call of the wild, answered in mime, quick-time, with care.  Bluebird toes the line!

January 23rd, 2010 in Spring