It is 4am. My alarm sings a Chinese lullaby. I get up, throw on socks and a jumper over my pyjamas and go and wake Cedar and Iris. We have a scheduled meeting with the birds. We choose the front garden as it is near the big beech trees that flank one street and the white birch that flank the other. We sit on the large logs around the fire pit and listen.
We are guests in their world, a world of layers of music, many pieces sung together and apart. It is, we know in an instant, not something we can fathom or understand - this grey hour, the promise of a day in their throats.
Me: What do you think they are saying?
Iris: They are saying what the day will be like, sunny or rainy. They are saying how they feel about that. They have to do it now while they can still hear each other, before the people wake up, before the car sound fills the world. Now is their chance.
The cascade of singing goes on. For a few notes I think I am able to follow one bird, and then loose it as it merges with another’s song. And for all the sound there is nothing to see, only the slight breeze through the leaves, the flowers waking up. And then a silhouette of a black bird on the peak of a next door’s roof, and as the note emerges, its body quakes, as if its smallness were but a vessel through which the notes came, their source surely something larger, more magnificent to look at.
We wait for a lull, for a break, to politely go back inside and seek the warmth of our beds, but there is no pause. Above or below the music is a contribution from a heavier bird, I imagine one with gravitas in other ways. It omits a croak. Iris thinks it is a frog. It makes us smile. But even the croak is beautiful, is other worldly, is communication and art in one.
Finally, we go back inside. We can still hear the song from our beds. It is good to know it is there. It is good to know that we visited that place and that it will be again tomorrow.
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