Corrinne Clegg Hales
Junco Flying at a Window: A Photograph
You can see part of the window frame
And the pushed back ruffle of red curtain
And the dishes drying in their rack
Next to the kitchen sink,
But the thing outside is a blur—the color
Of graphite—fluttery—substantial
And ephemeral all at once. If you keep looking,
You see darker shades and shifting
Angles—as if whatever it is
Is trying to take shape. It looks exactly
As I used to imagine the spirit
As a child—or the soul—escaping from the lips
Of the dead, fluttering up from deep within, riding
On last painful breaths, making its way
To the tongue to be puffed out, free
Of the body’s confinement at the slightest parting
Of the lips. When my grandmother
Was dying, she clamped her jaws shut—
Not even my mother could get her
To open her mouth for a bite of custard
Or a sip of water. I was on her side.
It seemed to me that she was keeping
Her soul where it belonged—that she understood
How the soul senses the body’s weakness,
How it flies up like a caged bird, pecking
And flapping against the teeth,
And how once you let it go,
You can never get it back. They are always
Trying to escape—up chimneys, out windows—
Even those summoned by séances and psychics
Seem annoyed at the imposition, impatient,
Slipping away at first chance through any crack
Toward the light. So this is different.
This picture is back-lit by snow and the cabin
Is dark inside. The man who took the photograph
Has watched the bird for days—it flies
At the window again and again, pecking
And clawing—clearly determined
To get in. As a rule, the photographer resists
Mystical interpretation of physical
Phenomena, but it’s been an odd spring—
Late in May, and snow still piles
Halfway up the outside walls
Of his mountain cabin, keeping it dim
And quiet inside. He has come here
To clear his head, to think, to re-imagine
His life. At first he assumes
The crazy junco must see
Another bird or its own reflection
In the kitchen window, but in that case,
A bird will slam straight into the glass
Unaware. This is deliberate. This bird flies
At the glass repeatedly, banging at it,
Hovering, jabbering, frantic
About some mysterious thing. After a week,
The man sets up his camera and waits
With shutter release in hand like he waited
In this same spot for calliope hummingbirds
All last summer. His patience is astonishing.
In winter, he would stand for hours in the freezing
Sierra night to catch a meteorite, or get
A perfect shot of the Orion nebula, or a partial
Eclipse of the moon. He has searched
This night sky from eight thousand feet
For over a year now, and he’s recorded distant
Astral bodies and disturbances impossible to see
With the human eye. Now he starts to imagine
That the junco is trying to tell him something—
That it’s an omen—some kind of sign.
And he catches the bird’s flurry
As a blur on fast film, a body devoted
To such pure, passionate motion,
It becomes transparent, vaporous—
If you opened the window
At the right moment, I believe
You could breathe it in.
From Separate Escapes
(Ashland Poetry Press, 2002).