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Birding

Kingbird in a tree
looking at me. The greenheads
are furious, swarming and throwing themselves
against the car windows. They're just insects
but I hope the windows hold anyway:
its my blood they want. I memorize
every part of that bird: black eyes, white throat and belly,
white terminal band across the end of his tail. Black
legs, and wings coming to points before, and not past,
the end of his tail. Hours later, I have a jolt of memory
and pull the Peterson's off the shelf
just as the sky starts to darken, and the thunder rumbles not
too far away. There you are in the flycatchers
in the flat pages of a book
like there were greenheads
trying to eat my blue Subaru
because to them it was vaguely bovine:
quadruped, and dark like an underbelly. Little kingbird,
I memorized you
so I could look you up
and know your name. We made a little eye contact
through my windows. You held still for me
while I looked you up and down. I'm in love with your
black feathers, and your white ones, and your bright black eyes,
and your tiny bones.

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He lays down
in the soft and wet
night grass. A cricket chirps, something else is a low trill.
Internally, he is resigned
from his position
of whether he will do it, or not,
or spontaneously change his mind
about doing it
because of what she said
that was irritating, annoying, and prickly.
He floats
in the soft grass
on his back
like a real swimmer. The
stars hang over him
very far away
and very closely. It could be
as if his shirt fell open, and the whole night paused, the cricket silenced
and the annoyances and irritations
and the things she said
or meant
all simply went away
and the stars increased their susceptibility
to gravity
to his own pull
even though he is lightly floating in the grass. It could be
as if his skin
painlessly dissolved
and his ribs
evaporated away
and his chest
was now an opening, and open and empty cavity
to which the stars responded
by beginning to slide
and then fall
and then rain into his chest
filling him
with light
without weight
without compromising
his position

in the grass and dew
and his ability
to lay down
and be somewhere between
a crust of earth
and a dark, scatter-shot, heavenly
night sky.

Yalta

The birds are hungry today. Little brown birds, they come to the feeder I make from an old can, tapped with nails to make holes to let the seed out. In some places nails are still there for them to perch on, but I wince at their naked scaly little feet gripping the iron nails in the subzero temperature. The sunrise makes the snow and ice go pale sherbet: peach, orange, pink. The birds are welcome company and tell me, life abounds. Life, even in the sharp quiet, flats of snow radiating forever in each direction from this little wood cabin. One hundred miles to Yakutsk, many more to anywhere.

Anatoly shoulders open the thin door, comes in from training. His eyelashes are frozen and his small blue eyes are burned bright red and streaming. I unwrap his woolens in front of the fire, snow and ice in the creases not melting as they hit the floor. Survivable inside, but not warm. I slap my hands together and rub fast. I lay him, face down, on the pallet bed, his pale rear and enormous tree-trunk thighs bulging up at me. Not sexual though. Its not that way for us. I pour a stream of brown horse liniment over his skin, and for such a big man he gives a shudder at the sensation anyway. I rub and rub, fast and light, working the oils into his skin. The skin goes bright red as his capillaries dilate, little steam trails drift up from his blood releasing its heat. Anatoly sighs, but no words. Anatoly is mute, as long as I've known him. By choice or birth I don't know.

Today we leave. We walk, miles and miles, carrying in small bundles all we own. Timing is precious to make sure we come to the next cabin before sundown, and the plunging temperatures. We sleep each night on a different pallet, spooned together, but not sexual. Just for warmth, to survive. If I find a can, and a nail, I bang it and put a little from my seed bag in, hang it by a window or a wall crack for watching. Sometimes the birds find it and come, sometimes they do not. Anatoly goes out for training, simply muscling for two, three hours through the waist-deep snow. Tree-trunk thighs result. The birds are my company while he is out. I have only necessities, what I can carry. Same for Anatoly. Except: me seed for my birds, Anatoly liniment to ease his pains. Even with survival all the time, we make a little room for something more than that.

He hopes for a chance to take this strength, make something of it. Learn a sport, then compete. Make money. A living. I hope for a place to hang a feeder and know the birds. I don't know what kind of birds they are, anywhere we go. Sometime, maybe, we will be in one place. I will learn their bird names, maybe even recognize a certain personal bird, day to the next day. We each have our hope, Anatoly and me. Hopes keep us together, living.

Ten miles each day. Maybe a week then, south and east, to Yakutsk. If the river is flowing, maybe more than ten miles a day. Maybe a month to Yalta. Then, maybe, a little money somehow. We leave the overland route and go over the Black Sea. Overland again, but warmer. No snows. Anatoly dragging heavy things to build his legs now, us still with my birds, his liniments. Then Ankara, and pears, and pale honey, and muscat grapes. Sweet things on our tongues, sliding down our throats. Maybe Anatoly makes a sound of pleasure, and I am there to hear it. Maybe I get Anatoly a fine-boned Angora cat, silky white, a chimera with one blue eye and one amber eye. Soft under Anatoly's rough meat fingers, so he learns stroking, along with muscling.

I think of this in the cold and dark, Anatoly warm and hulking around me. Bringing ourselves to all those Ankara ruins, Byzantine, Roman, Hittite, all mixed together. Taking our own ruin and mixing it in too. Who knows what then. What all we can make of it. I am hoping for it, in the dark, all the birds pressed breast to breast and sleeping in the dark trees, stars very far away and brilliant white, millions, scattered everywhere and over us, me and Anatoly, asleep, and then dreaming.

Terminology, Slogans: Higher Power, Keep it Simple

"Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all."

Khalil Gibran

"Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person."

Mother Teresa

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On the way home, I take off
a pink mitten, and push
scan, and for awhile
I drive and scan. Then,
I settle on something classical:
oboe, strings, solo flute
lyrics for the swelling hills
covered in a blazing white slab of
February snow, undulating unbroken
and soft
as I drive by. My phone rings
twice when you call, and I
pull the car over onto
the shoulder of the road
to better be able
to talk to you. I close my eyes
and I listen to your voice:
the timbre of the air you breathe
vibrating through your vocal folds, your
particular phonation.
I can't name them,
but I know them by heart,
even with my eyes closed: your voice's
range and weight, your most usual
breaks, and lifts -
I don't say that much. I mostly listen. I turn down
the radio, and I close my eyes. I hear
your words,
I know
your voice,
I can see
the air you breathe
pouring in, and then
lifting through,
and then sighing out of you. These days
this is mostly
how I talk to you.