The religion of birds

I was indoctrinated into the religion of birds young.

Our chapel was the oak kitchen table that us kids marred with pencils and markers, chipping wood to carve stray and cryptic words like, “Ashes” or “Suns.”

Our psalms were whispers, and our books to follow the sermon

was a chart punctuated with illustrations of snowbirds.

We traced over the bodies and wings of our saints like rosary beads;

Junco, Black Capped Chickadee of Carolina, Red Cardinals.

Holding our breath, as if that would cause birds to fall from gravity, we waited in the cloister of the kitchen, the corner of the table stabbing into our sternums, tensing our muscles as we transmitted into wood nymphs as wingtips blotted out the icy sunlight of December like the Solstice.

“Who could it be?”

A grackle winks at our wonder, treading over the suspended silence as it waltzes across the polished marble of snow, cackling as we sigh,

watching us with its polished eyes as it plunders the seed,

staying long enough for us to see its black feathers shift like a clergyman’s closet;

changing from purple to green to white, back to black, to nothing as it leaps up to return to the bare branches of our oak tree, cackling again to the gray sky, as if crowing in triumph, sending a signal for the congregation to receive communion.

Like stray feathers of the Grackle’s wings,

they fall like comets onto our offerings;

Blue jay, Rufus-sided Towhee, Nuthatch, and Cardinal,

Amassing like panels of stained glass, washing the world with its beauty,

filling our lungs with song.

We annotated the chart with haloes, circling the saints in a flurry, as if we could keep them in this state. Like miracles, they came and went, leaving us with nothing, but seeds and snow, and sermon.