A Choir of Seabirds

The cold here is deep and milky, with probing fingers and breath on the back of my neck. The quiet has settled in at our little farm, and the flames are waltzing behind the glass in the stove, and I, I alone, am awake in this room, this room lit only by those flames.

When I arrived at work, my crows were standing in a line so straight, they looked like decorations in a shop. They burbled at me in soft voices as I walked past them, sprinkling crackers across the striped and oil-stained asphalt. Later, when I came out to sit in the back seat and eat my lunch and read my book, two mockingbirds sat in the tree above me and sang me a recital, and their feathers were as gray as the East China Sea off Okinawa during wintertime, and I listened to them, and I talked to myself for a while, talked without opening my lips, talked in my own language to my own chest.

Driving home, a hawk dropped down out of the icy sky and flashed before me, low and intent on his business, and purposeful and relentless as a swordsman who has marked out his foe as a lesser man and will now begin to press the advantage.

And now out on the back porch, a trio of finches shelters between a joist and the metal roof, sleeping with their tails down along the raw wood, quiet and still, their little bodies expanding and contracting with their avian breaths, the late night air blanketing them as they dream their dreams, which I know they do, because sometimes theirs intersect with mine, and it is a noisy, nervous business.

As I enjoy my warm feet and my pleasant fatigue, as I listen to the sleep-sounds of lady and dogs, I listen to a song. And I will offer this song to you tonight, my readers. For you, my friends.

~ S.K. Orr