A long time afraid of the filigree of light, what you imagine to be the wing of a bird cleaving your face, air on your eyes before you can shut them. It's the only thing you see. It's the kind of wick you cannot lick your fingers to put out. --- the filigree / of light

My unmothered bird, dropped from the sky like a millstone. …the swell of new growth

For those of you who don’t religiously follow my twitter account, first of all, bless you. Cardinal perched on a fence like a bright, tiny flag. It’s hard to feel lonely while a bird is singing.

The sky is open all the way. whose irrepressible birds can’t believe their luck this morning

Inside the dodo bird is a forest, Inside the forest a peach analog, Inside the peach analog a woman, Inside the woman a lake of funerals, disappointed male lovers, scientists, Inside the lake a volcano of whale songs, Inside the volcano a language of naming, Inside the language an algorithm for de-extinction, Inside the algorithm blued dynamite to dissolve the colony's Sun, twinkle twinkle, I didn't mean to fall in love with failure, its molting rapture, I didn't mean to name myself from a necklace of silent vowels, I didn't go looking for the bird, I entered through the empty cage, hips first --- a lake of funerals to name myself from a necklace of silent vowels

To uncoil the wild little everything inside lungs throbbed by its own wings

When I looked at that mouse with her broom, I wondered which one of us was wrong about who I was. ​ She was a woman who had spent two years nursing her mother and her best friend through cancer. They had both recently died and she had lost herself in caring for them, she said. She wanted a week to be herself. Not a teacher or a mother or a wife. This trip was the thing she was giving herself after their passing. ​ That I wanted someone to articulate that they loved me, that they saw me, was a personal failing and I tried to overcome it. ​ It turns out, if you want to save a species, you don’t spend your time staring at the bird you want to save. You look at the things it relies on to live instead. You ask if there is enough to eat and drink. You ask if there is a safe place to sleep. Is there enough here to survive? ​ Forgave each other for telling the same stories over and over again. ​ To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. ​ What I understood on the other side of my decision, on the gulf, was that there was no such thing as ruining yourself. There are ways to be wounded and ways to survive those wounds, but no one can survive denying their own needs. To be a crane-wife is unsustainable.

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When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will onto a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book — to open the page and let the stories crawl in by themselves. ​ Her purpose in this project is to bring to the attention of the whole community, art that exists in its own context, ​ The artist creates a structure — whether that’s a map or a cordoned-off area — that holds open a contemplative space against the pressures of habit and familiarity that constantly threaten to close it. ​ Actually, I’ve always found it weird that it’s called birdwatching, because half if not more of birdwatching is actually birdlistening. I personally think they should just rename it birdnoticing. ​ That ended up being two years. I recently asked him how he spent that time, and his answer was that he read a lot, rode his bike, studied math ​ In nature, things that grow unchecked are often parasitic or cancerous. And yet, we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative. Indeed our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.

But I’m an obedient keeper. When the cat bites my cheeks at five in the morning, I rise naked and make my way to the deck door, hefting up the 35 lb bird seed bag laying next to it to fill the feeder before my body recognizes the cool of the mountain morning. And I call them to me, in lifted whistles and guttural falsettos. I tell my sweets the stores have been refilled, and I hear their whispers turn to chatter before the sun makes its way above the crest across the valley. I feed the cat his own breakfast, put the water on the stove, and snuggle back into bed for the few minutes left of just being. ​ And maybe that’s what I like about birds: the just being part. Their journey seems neither particularly harrowing nor complicated. You make it through the first year and you just get to bird. ​ chattering in delight over found feeders, smashing into windows only to ruffle their feathers out and fly back over the ledge. I want their flutters and frustrations to last as long as they can. As long as I can help them. As long as we can help each other.