For the birds

(2015)

 

The title does not seek to refer to John Cage, who, in 1981, published a collection of texts entitled For The Birds. Cage was probably thinking into offer a musical reflection to the must musical animal, the animal that is conventionally associated with music. The title that I choose: For The Birds, does not offer my thoughts to the birds, but points the physicality of death: we are food for worms or carrion for the vultures, for the birds.

The nine Haikus are instants featuring birds that happened during the thirty days that I lived in Casa Wabi. Each Haiku is diagrammed inside a cube drawn in the simplest cavalier perspective, limiting the space-time of the instant, referring to one of the most famous lines in the history of poetry, the opening line of the Auguries Of Innocence by William Blake: to see a world in a grain of sand.

 

 

Two orange-breasted bunting every morning; today: two buntings and a cardinal.

 

A bat under a Mexican grackle over a palapa, the palapa is in the middle,  I am below.

 

From south to north, forty-three flutters and the pelican merges with the sea.

 

 

A triangle of vultures flying in circles above me, I clap, still alive.

 

A devil fish covered in salt drying on the sand, a vulture goes down, takes it to heaven.

 

A great kiskadee between two cardinals, each one on a log, the three fly first.

 

A seagull kills a fish, a wave kills the seagull,   a vulture eats the fish and the seagull.

 

Close up: a pelican plunging into the sea. Long shot: a frigatebird plunging into the sea. 3490 miles from here: an arctic fox jumps, plunging into the snow.

 

A buzzard on a buzzard, four buzzards, two buzzards more.