The day was sunny and cool, so I joined it. I walked down the
bikepath that wanders out of Sausalito, and as it was low tide, I
took a sharp right turn off the pavement and into the fenny
estuary-water bird preserve.
There were no insects to bother me with their annoying, little,
whining voices and their crafty nips, for it was too cold for them.
All off hibernating somewhere, I suspect, or maybe just hanging
out as eggs, waiting to gestate, but the place was alive with
activity anyway, and singing.
The practical young chap who practices his trumpet out
there because he has no other place to play was around, out
of sight, working away at some new blues thang I hadn't heard
him play before. The crickets backed him, all screeping and
preeping patiently and regularly as tiny chitinous metronomes.
They sounded better here than they do in my house, where they
pulse loudly in too cramped a space, singing out their prison term,
waiting to be thrown to the lizards.
The reeds were positively chipper, photosynthesizing most
enthusiastically now that we've had a wee bit of rain in our
drought ridden lives, and they threw up their green, uliginous
arms in perky hosannas to the benificent weather, singing about
their cell respiration and about the joy of water and the musky,
rotting, fertile, nourishing soil beneath them. The sowbugs
ambled among each other at the base of the reeds, whispering
antestrophe to the weeds about contented, moist security or the
occasional panicky little riff as one or another closed around it's
underside like a tiny armadillo if the shadows around it changed.
And the best songs of all were the birds' songs, all gossipy and
peevish, snapping at one another over fishy bits or the affections
of a particularly attractive female. When I began to throw
them bits of bread, they sang excited, competitive calls,
admonishing me not to miss anyone. But the egret didn't bother.
He sauntered up lazily when he saw all the commotion, graceful
on his impossibly stilty legs, and just waited at me, casually
looping his neck over backwards to check his wing feathers, and
then staring at me again. I held out a large chunk of bread
at him, and he snaked out his neck and took it from my hand,
nodded me a curt acknowledgement, such as one would give a servant
that ought to know its place, tipped back his head, and jerked
down the bread. He came for more a couple of times, and I
complied, just thrilled to watch this breathtaking creature
doing anything, even something so simple as eating.
I had to wash my shoes off before I came back into the Library.
The songs in here are about electricity and math and the whispers
of turning pages, but it was good to get out and hear some
wilder tunes for a change.
Snarl! Mad heifers in a storm!
