The Thing With Feathers
Hope is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all.
– Emily Dickinson
The thin, blunt “thump” came just as I sat down with my lunch, in time to catch the last half-hour of a fine old movie before heading back to the kitchen table spread with my work-at-home-day paraphernalia. The noise wasn’t very loud, and if I hadn’t been sitting a few feet from the sliding glass patio door, I might not have heard it at all … and so might not have glanced over to see the little bird lying at the foot of the glass.
We’d come home one evening the week before to find a large pigeon lying in pretty much the same place, a little drop of blood dried by his lifeless head. I’d dutifully scooped him up with the shovel, ladled him into a garbage bag, and dropped him into the garbage bin … my stomach squirming, my eyes averted as much as possible.
There’s nothing like a dead body – animal or human – to drive home the hard finality of death. To underscore how abruptly, inevitably our joys and possibilities slam headlong into … the end. Whatever else it is, life is a vibrant, tangible thing. Its sudden absence leaves a stark empty that swallows every bright thing around it.
The tiny bird lying on my back porch now was not dead yet. Its golden-green body, little bigger than a hummingbird’s, lay crumpled like a tiny sack of apples. Its neck twisted at a horrible angle. I leaned down to peer through the glass, into its half-shut eyes. It’s beak slowly opened and closed, gasping out its final breaths.
I imagined it, those moments before, happily dodging and hurtling through the air – feeling its freedom and the happy prospect of whatever adventures lay beyond that clean, clear horizon. A horizon made of glass. Hitting it shattered tangy freedom in a spasm of pain and dazed confusion, and instinct would not tell him what had happened … what happened? … as the life drained from his dazed, bruised face.
I’ve no idea what to do for a dying bird that wouldn’t add to his pain and confusion. Nor am I of a nature that can coldly hasten the agony’s end. And ‘m not the kind who can stand there watching holy life pour out and away.
So, I strung a blanket across the patio, blocking the little bird from my vision, praying that the God Who created it would ease its small suffering and smooth and speed its passage to … whatever eternity may await a small, golden-green, feathered thing who wanted nothing but to fly and breathe free.
Pacing our den like a hospital waiting room, I remembered the old assurance: “Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will.” Perhaps then, it wasn’t asking too much to offer intercession for a dying little bird, to Another keenly aware of its dying. So I prayed some more, that his Creator would end things gently, quickly.
Minutes went by. A long half-hour. The flavor was mostly gone from my lunch, the cheerful diversion drifted out of the movie. But I ate, and I watched, and glanced at the blanket that blocked the view.
Time to get back to work. To look, or not to look? Curiosity won. (Curiosity always wins.) I peered timidly over the blanket.
The small patch of concrete was empty.
No drop of blood. No feathers. Nothing to show the golden-green bird had ever lain dying there.
I thought the same things you’re thinking. Somewhere a cat was enjoying the serendipity of a free meal. Or maybe, crooked neck or no, the bird was just badly stunned, recovered, and limped away to some nearby roof or tree limb to regain his avian composure.
I could hear other birds singing from the surrounding trees and rooftops. A chorus for their fallen friend? Maybe flocks do what legend says the elephants do, and carry their dying ones away.
But mostly, gazing in wonder on that empty place, I thought of Enoch. Who “was no more, for God took him.” And something deep in my soul smiled, and rested in hope.
“You are of more value than many sparrows,” says the One who knows them, each and all – the flying, the singing, the dying. Who is the God not only of our endings, swift or slow … but of infinite mysteries, and endless possibilities.
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