Wild Apples by Michael Pacey

Author:Michael Pacey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pottersfield Press

Ventriloquism and Mimicry

Undated, 1850: I noticed a singular instance of ventriloquism today in a male chewink singing on the top of a young oak. It was difficult to believe that the last part of his strain, the concluding jingle, did not proceed from a different quarter, a woodside many rods off.

September 25, 1855: Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua as it flies heavily off a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates.

Invitation to a game of hide-and-seek:

throwing your voice so it seems to come

from some other source;

so a maybe-mate has her interest piqued,

but can’t quite place you. So predators,

listening, can’t pin you down.

A male jay, chewink, robin seeking a mrs,

puts it out there, but beguilingly, posts

no box-number, nor e-mail address.

A pine warbler, catbird, bluebird sounds

as though he’s far off, at the top

of that distant elm maybe, when in fact

he’s seven or eight feet away –

as if lip-synching – giving you

the area code, but not his number …

In another quarter of the forest,

you hear a catbird, say, or brown thrasher,

goldfinch, performing note by note

a simulacrum. Polishing

his own song, a series of scales

repeated over and over, then

starts to freestyle, riff.

Catbird imitates cat, then crow –

its inquisitive char char – switches

mid-phrase, throwing in blackbird airs –

sprayey warbles, half-whistle – to make

his music distinctive: this cat can swing!

Thrasher mocks nasal gnah gnah

of a nuthatch, then works on his wren

impersonation; goldfinch scratch-tracks

a thrasher, while a white-throated sparrow

apes a catbird – both mocking the mocker –

and a purple finch does a canary run he’s heard

playing in a cage somewhere, maybe

wintering over in North Africa;

then turns into a robin. Marsh warbler

claims title of best rapper out there: chops

the beat of more than two hundred species

speeded up or slowed down

accelerando, ritardando: the master of tempo.

Many dissertations have been ruined

by mockingbirds, starlings –

they imitate everything! Traffic noise,

the squeal of tires, brakes, sirens,

dog barks, buzz of fluorescent lights.

One fool spent months in the forest,

a tape-recorder beside him unspooling

canned tunes of dozens of birds, to see

if he could school a flock of starlings.

In the end they ignored the songs,

but got the creak of his reels turning,

hiss of his tape, hack of his cough

down pat.

Every thesis

concludes with this sentence:

“There is no clear reason for mimicry

in the avian world.” Sure, shrikes

mimic songbirds to lure them near,

impale their carcasses upon

some thorny spike,

to be consumed at their leisure;

but songbirds copying songbirds

seems mere showmanship,

showing off, slamming. Nabokov

scoffed at recondite toffery

in his lifelong study of butterflies

and moths: a butterfly looks like

a leaf – not only is each detail

remarkably rendered – but markers

mocking grub-bored holes and

aphid eggs are generously thrown in,

“far in excess of a predator’s

power of appreciation.”

Concluded that nature, like art,

is all about deception, hoaxery.

With birds, exuberance of the music,

the making, masking becomes

an end in itself. From Bach

to be-bop to rap, the luxuriance

of reworking the figure, the fugue

becomes its own luxury. Theme

and variation, improvisation,

the song its own gaudy plumage –

to be best in your hood, on your turf –

someone the girls take note of, who

puts them in the mood. Counter-singing,

– hooks,

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