August 21: "I Looked Up," Helen, Passenger Pigeons

Mary Oliver spies a bird . . .

I Looked Up

by:  Mary Oliver

I looked up and there it was

among the green branches of the pitchpines--

thick bird,

a ruffle of fire trailing over the shoulders and down the back--

color of copper, iron, bronze--

lighting up the dark branches of the pine.

What misery to be afraid of death.

What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.

When I made a little sound

it looked at me, then it looked past me.

Then it rose, the wings enormous and opulent,

and, as I said, wreathed in fire.

Birds are like this--delicate and transitory, startling with fiery beauty, flying off before you even have a chance to utter a prayer of thanks or surprise or awe.  I take birds for granted.  Most people do, I think.  When I wake up on a summer morning, I assume there will be birdsong to welcome me into the day.  When the air turns cold and leaves blaze up, I assume geese will be filling the heavens with the traffic noises of their migration.  I expect this.  Count on it.

Flocks of passenger pigeons used to blot out the sun when they passed overhead.  Three to five billion of them.  Carolina parakeets crowded trees and skies in large, loud flocks, as well.  The dusky seaside sparrows were done in by the rockets of Kennedy Space Center roaring toward the heavens from their nesting grounds.  No one thought any of these birds would just take wing and vanish one day, wreathed in the fire of extinction.  

Yet, they are all gone.  Martha, the last passenger pigeon, died on September 1, 1914, in the Cincinnati Zoo.

Today is the one year anniversary of the passing of one of my best friends, Helen.  

What can I say about Helen?  She was a living, breathing, walking poem.  A flock of passenger pigeons, eating the sun.  A crew of Carolina parakeets, flashing emerald and saffron.  A host of seaside sparrows, hitching rides to the moon.  Up until a year ago, I couldn't imagine a universe without Helen in it.  I took her presence for granted.

Now, she's gone.  Like her feathered sisters and brothers, she spread her opulent wings and disappeared.  

I remember the last conversation I had with Helen.  She called me about a week before she passed.  Her voice was weak with struggle.  She said to me, "Marty, I'm ready."  I didn't need any more explanation.  I knew what she meant.  

I told her that I loved her.  Would always love her.  I promised to look after her gaggles, murmurations, ostentations of joy.  And I thanked her for being my friend.  My beautiful, flashing sea sparrow friend.  

Seven or eight days later, she was gone.

Even now, Saint Marty imagines her spreading her wings on a mountaintop.  Shouting her poems,  Rising, rising, rising into the crushing blue of the sky.