NIGHT WINGS

Ambling down the road into the rising morning, the slant of the sunlight just right to put a touch of red on the pendulous gold of the rice fields, I looked up and saw in the shadow from the far hill that the darker air too was filled with small sheets of flickering gold, rising and falling, to and from the light, on breezes I could not feel... Then my mind rose from thoughts of mere gold to a congregation of dragonflies testing their night wings in the first of this new morning with its absolute sun, its perfect air, and I could tell just by looking at the shining excitement of all those dancing spirits that they knew this world and this morning were precisely right.

WINGLESS

The barn swallows are out in full now, filling the dusking sky with their chatter and stunning aerodynamics— but what is the value of those skills, exquisite as they are, compared to the ability to appreciate such beauty?

I watch here wingless, at least in fact (the least of our leasts), winged in a greater way than even those swallows, for I can behold their elegance above fresh-watered paddies lined with sprouts of rice, reflecting sunlit clouds that spell the sky with calligraphies silently relating the vastnesses of beauty occurring around this tenuous planet of ours, beauty that every concept of god falls far short of, once it is perceived... Now that's flying.

Here's hope for our fragile species, which long ago mysteriously pursued the wingless path...

BRADY TALKS HAWK

These Spring days, the hawks grace the air in high blue romance, the males gliding, squealing and whirling around demurely spiraling but attentive females, the way love soars in wide-winged feathered beings.

Speaking of being, while I was out splitting wood late yesterday afternoon (after double-digging a new garden bed and transplanting some overgrown potted herbs into the soil) I heard a hawk who, at the end of his own days' labors, was majestying atop a pole over by the road, scanning his vast hawkdom and singing his heart out for love, like a feathered troubador. Maybe I was prompted by my exchange in Warbler the other day, but I figured I might as well see if I could get the big feathered being to converse, so I gave Hawk a try.

To anyone acquainted with it, Hawk is a difficult language; Warbler is a lyric breeze in comparison. Hawks work over long distances, so they start off piercingly loud (and far-reaching) at a high pitch and then go higher, the note thinning yet widening somehow, with an even higher-pitched and very difficult vibrato curlicue added at the end. The note is hard, but the vibrato is really tough, not only because the note goes so high and then flattens and widens, but because while whistling that note you have no oral room to move, so have to make the vibrato with your diaphragm, which is at counterpurposes to whistling, to get the whole thing just right.

Hawks have been doing it all their lives, but I just started, so I gave it a couple of feeble tries and garnered no attention other than what might have been a hawkish chuckle. After a while, though, I at least got into the vibrato ballpark, and my general pronunciation didn't seem too bad, but the hawk, who, if I was getting it right, should be needle-eyeing me as a competitor, instead turned and looked at me funny, pulling his head back from his shoulders, like 'What the-- Who the hell-- Was that noise YOU?' Must have been my accent. I tried a few more times, but he could take no more and flew away-- shaking his head, if I'm not mistaken. I tried to whistle my apologies in accented Hawk, but he did not respond.

In further proof of my failure at mastering the wide-winged language, not a single female hawk cruised by to check out this cool dude with the interesting east coast accent. A good thing, too; I wasn't feeling the slightest tinge of feathered romance. Which lack, now that I think about it, probably doomed my effort from the start.

Made wood chopping kind of high and airy, though.