birdsong3

My head was down, looking into the low mysteries, contemplating how to pry the precious, decomposing texts that I coveted � though as a non-student was not entitled to � from the crusty librarian at UNM.

Some anomaly between the Road on my left and the hulking mountains pecked at my dim consciousness. I resisted, busy with Matters of Great Import.

Eventually as I zombied along I noticed a parade of twelve or fourteen birds ranged in queue along the phone line to my right. The desert was remarkably full of birds of all kinds. There were exquisite bluebirds, and many kinds of raptors, including my favorite, the red-tailed hawk. Years before a red-tail left a rare feather for me on � of all places -- the 13th fairway of the Trysting Tree Golf Course in Corvallis, Oregon. And to Corvallis I would later return, as we also will.

I don�t know what kind of birds were perched on the phone line � finches, perhaps, or sparrows.

Briefly I acknowledged them and quickly returned to Grand Broodings (no, it�s not in Montana). But there was something weird about the phone line. Morse and Watson�s magic wire, strung like exteriorized DNA, like the cloudy wings of Mercurius duplex between earth and sky -- a worthy alchemical feat, the Logos threaded through matter, transcending space and time.

I resumed a measured pace, the Fire Road hypnotic, rising and falling before me, a gentle roller-coaster to the ranger station. I looked up and a bird fluttered off its perch, hovered in the sweet air, then floated down to the end of the little queue.

Nothing amiss there. I looked down the Road. I looked at the mountains. All good.

A second bird � the one now nearest me, at the �end� of the line � popped up and, mirroring my direction, hovered a couple of seconds, then winged along above his comrades, settling down at the end of the line, next to the first bird, furtherst away from me.

Such anomalies one stumbles across on this planet as it hurtles around the Sun, wandering like a hobo through space!

I stopped. I looked again at the Manzano Mountains. I eyed the birds, this time with a tickle at my neck hair -- the primal suspicion of prey. They preened, shook themselves, and gave out occasional peeps. I might as well have been in Finland.

I peered at them, but there was simply nothing remarkable about their behavior. There was nothing to see � just a flock of birds on a phone wire.

I took a few steps and the bird nearest me flew up and resettled in a new position � yes, I am sorry to report, at the end of the queue furthest from me. I pretended it didn't happen.

Then another did it.

Until that moment it hadn't occurred to me that I could be the subject � the victim, really � of a practical joke by a bunch of damn birds. It�s not very flattering. I am, after all, a human being, a sultan of sentience, the self-defined omega and epitome of the evolutionary spiral.

Yet I was being used, as a child � or a god � uses a favorite toy.

Still, why should I know humor, and not birds? Maybe the favorite joke of birds is the impermeable self-superiority of human beings?

So � having their little fun, perhaps, at my expense.

A dialogue between the �conscious� and �unconscious� parts of Nature is exchanged. In the beaker sparks glow and cohere.

Supposedly, I am charged with acting as the extension of Nature�s evolving consciousness. Yet here I am snookered by an element of Nature already conscious in its own right, on its own terms. Thus, on the pole of consciousness, suddenly I'm off the top. Now I'm the totem face in the dirt.

Ka-whop! I get slapped in the ontological kisser -- but with the dove�s wing, not the cat�s claw.

Another Stone overturned.