The Furious Spinner

Monday, November 22, 2004: Mario and I picked up our friend Dave in Portland; then the three of us drove out to the wildlife refuge in Ridgefield. It was cloudy, foggy, damp. We walked down toward the lake and the marsh the separated us from the water and the swans. The marsh grass was blond and dry. Most of the trees around us were bare. The landscape had that chilly depressing quality of autumn just before winter when everything seems dead, dead, dead, with no possibility of renewable—until we remembered the birds on the lake. Swans ooo ooling. Great blue herons stood only feet from one another and swans, geese, ducks. Swans flew overhead, turned, and landed in the water. We walked away from the lake toward what sounded like hundreds of swans. The path took us into the woods. I was so happy I leapt ahead of the men, glancing back every once in a while to see the dark figures amongst the yellow, blond, and green foliage, deep in conversation with one another. The path never led to the swans, so we turned around. Mario spotted a tiny green frog about half an inch long on the path, hopping between some green foliage.

Later, we got in the car and went to the other end of the refuge where you can only go in your car. The birds are apparently used to the cars—it serves as a blind. We were ten feet away from a great blue heron and it paid absolutely no attention to us as it hunted (and caught) a frog. (Nothing looks attractive with legs sticking out of its mouth, come on. It'll take me years to get that image out of my head.) As I was groaning over the heron's supper, Dave said, "Nature is cruel and all that." I shook my head. "No, Nature isn't cruel. It's just gross." We were able to stop the car and get out at one point. We watched and listened to hundreds of swans. The sound they make is so soothing. Beautiful. Otherworldly. Improbable. Just before we left, a flock of birds flew overhead. They looked like a cross between a swan and a great blue heron. Later, we figured out they were sandhill cranes, which I had never seen before in real life.

In Japan and China, it was generally believed cranes could live for a thousand years. Because they stood in flowing water on one leg, it was thought they stood in the slip stream of time, able to be a part of this time or that. Theseus danced the Crane Dance after escaping the labyrinth. I don't know why. Was it because its intricacy paralleled his ordeal in the labyrinth? Only one way in and one way out. If only we could discover what that way was... Perhaps he was demonstrating the secret to traversing the labyrinth: dance, dance, dance.

On the way home, we got stuck in traffic. *sigh* After we dropped Dave off, stopped at Thai Noon and ate dinner while we each wrote a poem about our experience in the refuge.

Blind

Behind a stand of
Himalaya black berries

a waterfall of
swan songs, the

notes dotting the
air like sonic stars.

We step along
the path, looking

for the source. See
sandhill cranes, their

forked leg silhouettes
shadowing the sky.

—Mario Milosevic


Wild Dreams

Looking for wild swans
We find them in Marsh Land,
Dusky from the long haul,
Their songs like long awaited caresses.
Ooo Oooo
Overhead a bald eagle swims
The thermals like an Olympian.
A kestrel or merlin dives near us
While we trip to determine if it is.
Magician or shapeshifter?
Demonstrate please.
We walk, following the swan songs
On a road strewn with brown leaves
Like bricks on the yellow brick road
This way to Oz.
There's no place like home.
A tiny green frog hops beneath
Our giant feet. I remember
A dream where I was in Love
With a Frog Prince.
My green-skinned beloved
Was set to cure me, I was certain.
But I awakened too soon.
I stare at this miniature of my love
And know it will not heal me
Although I am tempted to kiss
Its green lips with my red ones.
Would magic ensue?
Later...hundreds of swans
Ooo Ooo Ooo
There's no place like home.
They fly in formation,
Land on the water, legs splayed
Awkwardly, as though they remember
Being ducks in another incarnation.
Seconds later they are Nature's
Answer to Wild elegance.
A flock of twenty unknown birds
Fly over us and do not land.
They are not geese.
They are not herons or swans.
They are flying mysteries.
They sing like swans with an accent
And fly like herons with better posture.
Dark as a twilight sky. Or
A summer cloud after it has burst.
Out of a dream they come.
Who are you? we wonder.
Are you the answer?
I listen to their dream songs
Until they are pinpricks in the sky.
Then night begins to spread.
I have awakened again
Too soon.

—Kim Antieau 0 comments

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