I Listen With Care
I listen with care, holding the bird close.
Her name is Precious, a Barbary dove from the Elmwood Village area in NY, rescued from Delaware Park. When I found her, she had fallen from a Red Maple and was shaking in dismay, aggrieved by the perilous world, looking around dumbly, bewildered — inept to help herself.
After administering meticulous nursing and providing a restorative sanctuary of darkness, a haven in which to convalesce, she has rallied. I made her a nest of blankets in which to shelter, and she has been revivified enough to relinquish her defences and bravely accept my forthcoming love. She is significantly more relaxed. Trauma is a fleeting ghost, which yields to love in determined application, disappearing into the past like feathers on the wind.
She is still young, but already her body contains worlds of wild and uninhibited experiences. I listen with care. I can hear the red oak and white speaking to her at night, unveiling their hearts in a rustle of leaves, explaining what the stars look like above her and why she is a child of the infinite, and never permitted to entertain despair. I can fathom in her svelte and innocent frame the aspect of the ebullient moon, speaking harvest fullness and the bliss of the season.
I listen with care. Although she is quite silent and perfectly fragile, I know the universe as she knows it. I can ascertain the flashing whiteness of the barn owl pitching across the frosty air. I can see the squirrels and rabbits cavorting in innocence on the grass under the proud observance of the stately black pine. I can discern in her simple magnificence the sport of the other birds, which peruse the world alongside her, the ducks and geese swaggering and honking in awkward procession, the gray catbirds mewing with feline exuberance as the dawn light grows. By this intimate proximity alone I can estimate the jewel-like beauty of the blue jays and barn swallows spiralling in merriment in the unbounded air. She tells me everything.
As her tenacious claws hold fast to my fingers, I listen with care. I can comprehend her so easily. I espy new vistas of memory. She is like a night watchman conveying visions of the unsleeping midnight. I see what she sees; the unmitigated mischievousness of the raccoons negotiating the trees, like thieves pursued by the law, their adorable and ungainly antics. I glean visions of the furtive water rats filtering through the reeds like fugitives. As though by a vicarious sensibility, I can appreciate the lengthy tendrils of the weeping willows, which droop down like a multifarious veil, enshrouding the hermetic trunk as though it were a vault of treasure. I see the stupendous Japanese zelkova, which she has flown over so many times before. I see the red baubles of the crabapple, strung like Christmas decorations, waiting for the advent of snow and the park’s ubiquitous reinvention in white, when the children weave their magic of laughter through the wooded vales, skating in effortless circles and crafting snowmen with cheer. Precious is perfect in her innocence. She tells me everything.
adamdaniel 