Lia Purpura
Just Sparrows
Just. That weird diminishment. The common, the daily, not much here to see—though the vast lives of the smallest occupy us, harrow the blood, corner the breath, balance and tend the ongoing systems. Early this morning, a thin pink time, tender, not yet yellowed up, the sparrows were rustling through the fir out front. In the nest of my hands would fit two or three birds, and that’s all it took—a plain, brown handful to set the tree on—no, not fire. Set it on saying. The tree went on saying, chipping, seed-cracking, sparrowed up with talk and intention, a body in need of sparrowing, the way one needs to stretch after being too long in one spot. After being too long one thing.
A breeze came and everything shifted—the light, my hair. Branches changed their dark parts for wings. House sparrow: percher, quick sipper from bark-troughs of black rain. Passerine domesticus: the moving-andsettled, the settled-but-briefly, like any of us with more than a singular way to be known. This morning, green needed a way of inflecting. Chose sparrow. What happened was like a glass steady-filling. More landed, gathered, kept on with their being. I entered the rising (anyone could) and just at the top, at the lip, time held. It didn’t still or mark or pass, but hovered (we all did) in the near-brimming. At the swell, it fattened, then overran. Poured down and sang. And sang and sang.
Then they flew. The sparrows lifted all together, ripened, loosened, scattered like seeds.
A moment’s not lessened by its passing—its brief stay or sudden flight. The moment fleshed, then flashed into air: sparrows pulled me up to a branch, landed me in a fray of green.By me I mean those drops of iridescing sap, in patches dried like salt or rime. Grubs in holes, flicker-dug. Black moss. Wet bark. Needles in breeze. All fed on light, air, water, the bodies of others. All sparrow-led, or touched, or seen.
Outside, I can see the brief sparks of flashlights illuminating the boots of the hunters.