More on songbirds, from Annie Dillard

Nature is vaster than we will ever perceive.

"Our meaningful activity scarcely covers the terrain. We do not use the songbirds for instance. We do not eat many of them; we cannot befriend them; we cannot persuade them to eat more mosquitoes or plant fewer weed seeds.

"[Their] show would play to an empty house, as do falling stars which fall in the daytime.

"That is why I take walks."

From pages 72, 73 of the 1982 edition of Teaching a Stone to Talk.

"When Women Were Birds"

From Terry Tempest Williams, pg 205 of When Women Were Birds,

Once upon a time
when women were birds
there was the simple understanding
that to sing at dawn
and to sing at dusk
was to heal the world with joy.

TTW cites the hermit thrush; the song sparrow.

Eve took the apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and is no longer a bird. On pg 89, TTW writes "What I came to appreciate was how the transgression of Eve was an act of courage that led us out of the garden into the wilderness."

The garden is filled with mosquitoes, thorns, predators and prey. We are predators. A wasp stings; poison ivy burns. Biting the apple is revelation. A garden more clearly perceived is a wild place.

TTW concludes "there is comfort in keeping what is sacred inside, not as a secret, but as a prayer. "  The sacred is that which must be kept private.

Pg 92, "The world begins with yes."

The 5 Types of Poems

1. Songs
2. Companion calls
3. Territorial aggression (often male to male)
4. Adolescent begging
5. Alarms

Found in What the Robin Knows by Jon Young.