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| Nicholas Hely Hutchinson |
Cheer
Like the
waxwings in the juniper,
a dozen at
a time, divided, paired,
passing the
berries back and forth, and by
nightfall,
wobbling, piping, wounded with joy.
Or a party
of redwings grazing what
falls—blossom
and seed, nutmeat and fruit—
made light
in the head and cut by the light,
swept from
the ground, carried downwind, taken....
It's called
wing-rowing, the wing-burdened arms
unbending,
yielding, striking a balance,
walking the
white invisible line drawn
just ahead
in the air, first sign the slur,
the liquid
notes too liquid, the heart in
the mouth
melodious, too close, which starts
the
chanting, the crooning, the long lyric
silences,
the song of our undoing.
It's called
side-step, head-forward, raised-crown, flap-
and-glide-flight
aggression, though courtship is
the object,
affection the compulsion,
love the
overspill—the body nodding,
still
standing, ready to fly straight out of
itself—or
its bill-tilt, wing-flash, topple-
over;
wing-droop, bowing, tail-flick and drift;
back-ruffle,
wingspread, quiver and soar.
Someone is
troubled, someone is trying,
in earnest,
to explain; to speak without
swallowing
the tongue; to find the perfect
word among
so few or the too many—
to sing
like the thrush from the deepest part
of the
understory, territorial,
carnal,
thorn-at-the-throat, or flutelike
in order to
make one sobering sound.
Sound of
the breath blown over the bottle,
sound of
the reveler home at dawn, light of
the sun a
warbler yellow, the sun in
song-flight,
lopsided-pose. Be of good-cheer,
my father
says, lifting his glass to greet
a morning
in which he's awake to be
with the
birds: or up all night in the sleep
of the
world, alive again, singing.
Stanley
Plumly
“To find the perfect word among so few or the too many - to
sing like a thrush from the deepest part…” To sing. To follow the birds, to
choose to fling one’s self headlong into life. To face it like the Northern
Cardinal does, with a “Cheer, cheer, cheer.” Is that the key to this whole poem - that first word, "like"? Like the birds? To live like the birds - ? Aren't we sometimes "wounded by joy"? Made "light in the head and cut by the light, swept from the ground, carried downwind, taken..."? Can we do it? Live wide open, with a "bill-tilt, wing-flash, topple-over; wing-droop, bowing, tail-flick and drift: back-ruffle, wingspread, quiver and soar"? What does that mean? How does a human being do that? I want to know.
