may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living —e. e. cummings “may my heart always be open to little”

Several years ago, my Philadelphia daughter and I were drinking coffee one summer morning when she turned to me and said, “Is this what you do?” “What? I asked. “Drink a morning coffee?” She shook her head and pointed out the wall of dining room windows to four bird feeders well-stocked with black-oil sunflower seeds. As I watched birds swoop in from the timber, I said, “Well, yes, this is what I do. I’m a bird person.”

I have a thing for all birds, but especially small, blue birds. A bluebird or indigo bunting sighting can make my day. I’ve been known to creep around the edge of our timber like a crazy woman, eyes peeled and breath held, in search of an indigo bunting I can hear but not yet see. I’ve been known to make a dead stop in the middle of a trail, believing that if I stand there long enough, a bunting or bluebird will simply appear. And when an indigo bunting visited one of our bird feeders last year (a first! a miracle!), I crawled on my knees through the dining room, crouching low under the windows—much to the amusement of my family—in hopes of getting an even closer look at it. Biologist and bird artist Julie Zickefoose claims, “[t]he presence of a single bird can change everything for one who appreciates them.” Although I’ve yet to see another indigo bunting on our feeders, I’ve lived in wonder of this single sighting, transfixed as a shaft of sunlight ignited a blue so brilliant, it defied words.

“Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much,” writes Gregory Maguire in his novel, Out of Oz. This may be what I love most about birds. The way they navigate the world at the “margins,” “on the edge of things.” In my father’s Jottings Towards an Autobiography, he writes, “I have always been like Thoreau, preferring broad margins between myself and others.” I learned to love birds from my dad. And I grew to love the “broad margins” that allow me to notice the small but infinitely valuable things on the edges. As I walked this morning at the nature preserve and heard the distinctive song of the indigo bunting, I looked high into the trees, searching the uppermost edges of their silhouettes to find a lone bunting perched at the very top of a cedar. He was singing at the edge where earth meets sky. I might’ve missed him if I hadn’t learned that treasure lies at the margins.

And I might’ve missed him if I hadn’t learned to live by the words of American naturalist John Burroughs: “If you want to see birds, you must have birds in your heart.” I walk and watch with expectation, with confidence. Because I have birds in my heart. Because I walk without earbuds, listening. “In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence,” writes Irish essayist Robert Lynd. To see birds, you must hear them. To hear them, you must be quiet. In this season of my life, I’m learning to relish silence. I’ve always valued solitude, but I’ve discovered an intimacy with the natural world that only comes, I believe, from “becoming a part of the silence.” Birds have much to teach me, and I’m still learning.

I’m learning more, too, about the ways birds inspire us. Burroughs understood their particular significance to writers:

The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense is his life, large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic, his frame charged with buoyancy and his heart with song.

For eight years, I’ve had a blue parakeet named Billy. He lost his partner two years ago, and several months ago, he lost his ability to fly. As I worked in the kitchen one day, I heard a thump and was horrified to see that Billy had plunged from his perch at the top of the cage to the bottom, where he scrambled to right himself, his wings flared awkwardly to each side for balance. But what happened next amazed me. He used his beak to climb up the cage and positioned himself, once again, on his favorite perch. Since then, he plummets to the cage floor several times a day, but he always makes the laborious climb back up to the top. The first time this happened, I thought he had days, maybe hours to live. But Billy is a force of nature; he’s “large-brained, large-lunged, hot, ecstatic” and refuses to let his age and handicap dampen his spirits. He sings in the mornings, his voice more tremulous now but joyful nonetheless. As a poet—and a 70-year-old—Billy has become for me a symbol of the kind of joyful perseverance and “buoyancy” I seek.

Last week, on my 70th birthday, as I was rounding the trail by the turtle pond, I spotted an indigo bunting in the cattails about ten feet ahead of me. For a few glorious seconds, it stayed there, letting the sun catch its iridescence. This must be a sign, I thought. Hours later, as I looked out my kitchen window to the new purple martin house my husband recently built, lo and behold, not one, but two male bluebirds were perched on top. This has to be a sign, I thought.

A sign of what? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I really have no idea. I just like the fact that several small, blue birds showed up for my birthday. And so, as I enter a new decade in my life, I’m amazed, again, at the great mystery of the natural world, how it welcomes you, and as poet Mary Oliver writes, announces “your place in the family of things.”

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body 
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
― Mary Oliver (Dreamwork, 1986)