Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

This summer walking the hilly road up to my home in Vermont, I watched a broad-winged hawk land on a dead tree trunk. He was at eye level, only twenty feet away. He looked regal and never budged — just eyed me as I gave a wide berth. I’m sure he was seeking rodents or voles of some kind. I posed no threat, which he must have known.

Earlier in the year, I happened upon a Timberdoodle in the sky doing his courtship dance for a potential soulmate. The widening circles, followed by a plunge to the ground, were terrifically moving.

The above are recent logs entered in a bird book I’ve recently purchased. I am attempting to keep a journal of sightings of the avian species during morning walks.

In my head, I am composing an imaginary essay, titled In Defense of Birdwatching and Writing Poems about Finches. Lately, I’ve had conversations where talk of birds is the equivalent of talk of weather, a signifier of what we avoid in our daily conversation and poems in lieu of more urgent and pressing topics. Remarks critical of writing about birds parallel disparaging comments of writings about gardens and nature walks through state parks. The belief is that such writings are an indulgence in an age in which it seems the world is going up in flames. That’s one perspective.

If only we viewed observations of the natural world and meditations on birds, mammals, and plant life as equally, critically urgent, we might awaken to the necessity of caretaking of our planet and each other. Birdwatching does not have to be a form of looking away, it can be an antidote for our spirit. I’ve made natural environments my sanctuary because of the violence and trauma I’ve witnessed in my life. To take an interest in birds and the outdoors is the comfort I require when all else feels insurmountable.

Today’s poem makes use of birds and their naming as elegy. Its mourning rises to the level of a sacred comforting ritual.

This is a poem by Jenny Browne.

I Am Trying to Love the Whole World

but you can’t keep everything.

You can only enter the sleepless 
                   rooms repeating, more slowly

& in alphabetical order

the names of birds: albatross bunting cormorant dove. Albatross
                   bunting cormorant

instead of your dead friends
don’t you mean?

Mean egret. Mean grackle. Mean humming.
Keep humming. Keep jay.

Say kingfisher. Say loon.

Say despite the racoons screeching
                   all night like blown timing belts

high in the trash trees

while the skeletal fence cats carry on
                   their cage match over moonlight.

Say Katie Rhonda Shimi T I mean

mocking mocking

                   & still we haven’t finished

cleaning out your studio, your drawers
                   full of heart-shaped catalpa leaves

sketches of standing ovations
                   for melancholic rock stars, charm

bracelets & the chiseled gray
                   mountains of Spain, over which

we had yet to fly.

& your laugh like an ambulance,
& your laugh like the elephant grass.

"I Am Trying to Love the Whole World" by Jenny Browne. Used by permission of the poet.