The Chat
by: Mary Oliver
I wish
I were
the yellow chat
down in the thickets
who sings all night,
throwing
into the air
praises
and panhandles,
plaints,
in curly phrases,
half-rhymes,
free verse too,
with head dipping
and wing-wringing,
with soft breast
rising into the air--
meek and sleek,
broadcasting,
with no time out
for pillow-rest,
everything--
pathos,
thanks--
oh, Lord,
what a lesson
you send me
as I stand
listening
to your rattling, swamp-loving chat
singing
of his simple, leafy life--
how I would like to sing to you
all night
in the dark
just like that.
I have a confession: I wouldn't know a yellow-breasted chat if it perched on my head and shit in my eyes.
After reading Oliver's poem, I did a little research. Found some pictures. Listened to recordings of chat song. Read about migration and mating and habitat. Now, I'm book smart when it comes to chats, but I probably still wouldn't recognize one unless it was wearing a name tag: "Hello! My name is Chat."
I have friends who are incredible birders. With one eye closed, they can pick a pine warbler out of a lineup at 100 paces. With both eyes closed, they can name a white-breasted nuthatch in one note. It's a skill I've always admired. About the only feathered creatures I can identify by song are a duck (QUACK!), a goose (HONK!), and a loon (Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond).
One website said this about chat birdsong: "...males deliver streams of whistles, cackles, chuckles, and gurgles with the fluidity of improvisational jazz." Picture Charlie Parker with feathers. I mean, his nickname was "Bird." Birds sing for various reasons--claiming and defending territory ("this shit is mine!"), attracting a mate ("I'm hot shit!"), courtship duets ("Shit, I'm into you!"), and general communication (new food source--"this shit tastes good!"; incubation duty--"time to sit on the eggs, dumbshit!"; and keeping in touch while flying--"hey, shithead, I'm over here!").
Why am I telling you all of this? Because, when I read poems, I can sometimes get lost chasing rabbits down holes. If I don't understand a line or reference in a line, I have to look information up. For example, this whole bird digression started with me typing "chat bird" into Google. Here I sit, almost an hour later, listening to recordings of birds and typing the word "shit" six times. (Full disclosure, I am ADHD, so I can get distracted pretty easily.)
But the digressions are the fun part of writing for me. It's where discovery and inspiration happen. For instance (this one just flew into my head), think of the word "chat" in Oliver's poem. She's obviously referring to a very specific type of bird. Yet, "chat" can also refer to casual conversation, too, as in "I had a nice chat with my wife this morning." Oliver writes that the chat is "singing / of his simple, leafy life." The chat is chatting with the Lord. And then Oliver gets to the heart of the poem: she wants to sing praises all night long, just like the swamp-loving chat.
That is Oliver's message today, and mine. I'm whistling, cackling, chuckling, and gurgling praise for birds and singing and poetry. At the end of a long, long day of work, I sit down, open up a book, and find words that fill me with wonder and make me want to write.
Saint Marty thinks that shit's pretty amazing. As Vonnegut's bird says: Poo-tee-weet?
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