Today a gorgeous male bluejay flew into my garage and despite my opening both large overhead doors, it could not find its way out. I ached as it careened from one wall to the next or landed on the upper part of the doors when passage to freedom and the hot blue sky awaited just inches below. Finally, I opened the side door, only a regular sized one, and he flew immediately out. I could hear his high shrill cry of triumph as he soared into the summer afternoon and felt joy for him.
Evelyn’s experience was not as happy, and though she expressed it three quarters of a century ago, I was sorry. Yet, she found God even in this small tragedy.
I FOUND A BIRD
Is man a creature more divine than are
the birds, whose rounded voices rock in song
from morning, when the sunburst’s dewy gong
suggests their waking, til the blue-wheeled car
of night spills scent of sleep? What slender bar
supports them but the evanescent thong
that fastens cloud to cloud? Theirs is no wrong
that pilfers silver from a tipsy star.
I found a bird today, caught in our door.
Its cloudy flight was crushed in wooden bands.
Its pointed lips were rigid with the strain
of interrupted song. My clumsy hands,
my human mind were helpless to restore
divinity to its sky-soaring plane.
Evelyn Coffey
Once Evelyn called me and told me that a bird had gotten into her basement. It was just a starling, a kind of nuisance to some of us, who resent it for its lack of robin song, of goldfinch beauty. But it was a bird, and to Evelyn it was robin and goldfinch and divine. When I approached it, its panic increased, and saving it seemed futile. But I reached out to it with Evelyn's hands, honestly, and it became calm. It landed in a corner and let me wrap it in the towel I had brought, and I could release it, to Evelyn's delight.
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