Walking With Birds
Walking With Birds If the only thing I’ve done these last ten years is to make friends with the raven, to recognize her voice in the breathless cacophony of the desert highlands, the way her call sounds like a rascador; the mallet excavating the ridges of a carved wood-like gourd, or the way she perches atop the telephone pole, lifts her shoulders, spreads her wings, leans into her yell at my dogs, the challenge, teasing, warning, “Come chase me! Come get me! I’ll peck off your nose!” And if the only thing I’ve learned is the screech of the nighthawk and the buzz of her wings as she dives the evening sky; a drone sized dive bomber heading straight towards the ground, pulling up sharply, just-in-time, again and again, under a setting sun screaming pinks and oranges, beyond her, behind the baffles of clouds, red mesas, indigo hills. Or the songs of the mockingbirds that play in my ears, verses and choruses that cut throu