June 3rd - June 6th

June 3, 2005


Back to solitude today, and it feels nice, as much as I loved having a visitor. I got right back into writing this morning, and was almost finished with a new poem when I heard a loud thump against the window. I knew exactly what it was. All during my coffee and while I was working out the first few stanzas of the poem, I’d been watching two western tanagers chasing each other around the yard, a male and a female, and I’d been thinking that they were courting and had a nest nearby. I’ve been seeing them for days. Then came the thump. I went outside and there in the grass beneath the window lay the male. Given the noise of the crash, I thought he would be dead, but he wasn’t. I picked him up. His heart was racing and he seemed to be in shock. I figured that he’d also broken a wing. I sat on the steps with him for a while, stroking his head, sad to see such a beautiful bird, one which only minutes ago had been flying around so sprightly, now so pained and frightened. It was thrilling to hold him in my hand, especially since the western tanager is such a beautiful bird. I saw my first one in Yellowstone park several years ago, and I was excited to find them so abundant here at the homestead. Now here was one pretty banged up and shivering in my hand. I couldn’t just leave him outside like that, so I took him in and fashioned a cage inside a Havahart trap. I was afraid that if I left him on one of the tables on the deck, he would try to fly and simply fall and hurt himself even more. After the chicken debacle, I knew enough to keep him well out of Gussie’s reach, too. So I set him up in the cage. Later I looked out the window and saw the female, his mate, on the clothesline with a bunch of lichen in her beak. She was looking for him, but I’m not sure if she could see him there in the cage. Yes, they were in the middle of building a nest. For the next hour or so I could hear her calling in the yard. After lunch while I was hoeing in the garden I picked up some grubs and worms for him. When I went on the deck to give him the worms, he looked much more alert and was standing up straight. I put the worms in the cage, and then watched him from inside the house. He paid no attention to the worms. Instead, he tried to squeeze through the bars. I decided to let him out, placing him on the glass table. He hopped around a bit, and after several minutes flew to the deck railing! I went inside so as not to frighten him. Then he dropped down to solar panel bar. Then to the grass. I went out to make sure he was okay, shot a photo of him, and off he flew in a wide arc—ten, twenty, thirty feet up and into a tree! A story with a happy ending. Apparently, he wing wasn’t broken. I think he only suffered a concussion in the crash. I’m confident he’ll find his way back to the nest and to his mate, which is more than I can say for myself.

Here he is after the crash:



And here he is five hours later, after recovery, and before his flight to freedom:

Isn’t he a gorgeous bird?

The crashed flight of the tanager added poignancy to the poem I’d been writing, a piece based on a collage I finished last night. Both the collage and the poem share the same title—“Bellevue, Paris, New York, Wherever”—and both allude to the myth of Icarus. In the collage a boy is falling through the air in front of an apartment building in a city. Some people see him falling; others don’t. While assembling the collage, I kept thinking of W.H. Auden’s poem “Musee de Beaux Arts,” in which he describes the scene in Pieter Breughel’s painting “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.” So my collage and my poem owe some debt to Auden, to Breughel and to the injured tanager.

Here’s the collage:



If you’re wondering about the title, it’s what appears just above the chicken and the girl. I clipped it out of a Seattle newspaper I found in one of the pantry cupboards.

Here’s the poem:

Bellevue, Paris, New York, Wherever


A boy falls from a window or a roof,
no feathers, no wax, the sun hardly out,
the peace of dinner broken by a shout.
Flies and neighbors gather demanding proof.

The cat in 14-B blinks from its sill.
But where is the boy’s mother? His father—
don’t you know?—was killed last year in the war;
she took a second job to pay the bills.

A siren navigates the labyrinth
of streets until its red lights dance across
the body covered now with sheets. The loss
deepens in the hush. When the ambulance

rolls away (no rush now), people shake heads
and cough, spent but reluctant to unfold
their arms and ascend the stairs to their cold
plates, their evening news, their familiar beds.

But there is the mother to consider—
how, later, she saw the blood-stained pavement,
and by the open window comprehended
the weight of that falling as it hit her.



June 5, 2005

I landed my first reading! Thanks to Judy Montgomery, whose lovely chapbook I published in 1999, I’ll be reading in Eugene on September 20th. Judy recommended me to the woman who runs the Windfall reading series. Details to follow. All I know so far is the date and city and that there’s a nice honorarium included. I spoke with the organizer woman yesterday. I’m looking forward to it. I’ll have plenty of new pieces from which to choose.

On a less happy note, I think Dutch Hen is sick. She’s been sitting on the nest for three or four days now, her head pulled back into her shoulders. She doesn’t appear to be eating or laying eggs. At first I thought she was sitting on an egg, but she wasn’t. I took her out of the nest the other day and she ate a little bit. When I went out this morning, she was in the nest again. I looked in my poultry book and, based on the symptoms I’m observing, I think she has coccidiosis, a disease caused by a protozoan parasite, coccidium. When I go into town tomorrow I’ll try to pick up some coccidiostats at the feed store and see if they’ll help. It’s too bad. She’d been so healthy and productive.


June 6, 2005

Back to winter today! When I woke this morning it was a rainy, chilly 45 degrees out, and when I got up in the higher elevations on the way to town, there was snow for a good ten miles. Don’t they know it’s June?


It's hard to believe it was in the 90s just last week.

I’m going to hear John Daniel, former Dutch Henry resident and now overseer of the program, read tonight in Ashland. I think he’s going to be reading from his new memoir, part of which is about spending a winter at the Dutch Henry Homestead in 2000. My dad read the book and loved it, and my brother Michael is reading it now. It’ll be great to meet John and hear him read.