What are these jackdaws saying? I don’t know.
I need translations for the parts I hear.
The conversations of this smallest crow
come through my window loud and klaxon clear
but are more Greek than English to my ear.
These jackdaws lodge most seasons in the tower
of the giant church and grace the sunset hour
with flying squads whose aerial antics bring
them my applause, but now when blossoms flower
they nest as couples, celebrating Spring.
Cat purred, ‘the log of minus one.’ ‘That’s undefined!’
the jackdaw yelled. He flew down, cawing foul.
He darted off before the cat’s claws fined
his rudeness. See the cat rear up and yowl
that the bird is absurd to think she speaks of math.
‘If I add that the log of zero is a limb
of Satan, then you are on a slippery path
of soggy rhythms leading to a swim
in waters dark as the proverbial Styx,’
the cat adds. See the jackdaw, unimpressed.
‘Next,’ he tells the cat, ‘you’ll claim to fix
the log of positive one at what’s professed
to be itself one, into some dumb allusion
you will make to mask your massive math confusion.
‘Let me spell it out in words,’ the jackdaw said.
‘F of X and F inverse of x are inverse functions
If and only if F inverse of F of x equals x
and F of F inverse of x equals x.’
‘Thank you,’ I answered and tried again
to sprinkle grains of salt upon his tale.
‘He will fly a monotonic logarithmic function,’
said the jackdaw on my left. The others laughed.
‘Before he takes off, better give him unction,’
said another. With a swooping flight she graphed
the dizzy fall she estimates I’ll fly
should I leave this roof where we are congregating.
At a signal that I miss, they swarm on high.
They look back to watch me follow. They’re still waiting.
The squirrel presided. Daws danced. I arrived
from what they call The Nether World: the ground.
My fear of falling balanced by my need
to hear non-human wisdom, I held tight
to budding branches. I stood on a limb.
The squirrel called for order. Jackdaws in their hundreds
flew from the church and occupied the tree.
‘A song!’ one said. They made an awful noise.
‘In Human speech,’ the squirrel said. They complied.
They told me about balance, flight, and life.
I thanked them and prepared to climb back down
and saw other humans take away my ladder.
The crows cruise by the church in close formation.
They bank in search of something I can’t see.
My years on earth, less hard to count than crows
against the sun as the flock flies by at speed,
accelerate until whole decades pass
in days through spaces that had taken years
to navigate the first time, then they’re gone.
The duck song wakes me, singing our canal
into existence, snipping bolts of dark
from the cloaks the waking duck-and-coot cabal
flew in the face of nighttime in the park.
Crows fly until the sun, touched, tips the earth
so light leaks in. Wood pigeons coo the grass.
A falcon scream creates a stream that’s worth
a trip, the other birds think, and they pass
my window in review in ones and twos.
Their songs connect canal and stream to lakes
where herons intone fish and note which choose
to dive or be the breakfast they will take.
I, also recreated by bird song,
salute the flocks and, singing, fly along.
A cormorant is fishing my front porch,
a shelf of small stones sloping under sea
so clear I see the trace at thirty yards
each time he dives. The surf sounds subtle here.
A gathering of gulls lights on my left
enhancing the blessed solitude I feel.
No human in my line of sight that way:
just tiny surf, and dozing gulls, and hills.
Sharp hills, that turn to mountains as they climb.
White gulls fly over, checking what I write.
The rest remain at rest; we share some sun,
and comment, in our ways, on how the wind
is lighter, and how ozone smells so clean.
More rocks revolve with every single wave
than men have years of history on this earth,
and each rock tells a story seagulls hear.
I hear the stories too, and, like the gulls,
take comfort I don’t understand the words.
Earth Tourist 