Broken Wing by David Budbill & Donald Saaf

Author:David Budbill & Donald Saaf [Budbill, David & Saaf, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Published: 2017-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

“What is wrong with me? We were meant to go two by two. All around me, now that it is spring, everyone comes in pairs; even Broken Wing has a partner. What is wrong with me? Why am I here in this place alone? Why have I exiled myself here, separated from my people, from my origin, from everyone? What’s wrong with me?”

Now the tree swallow chicks fledge, and both the adults and the young swoop and twitter through the garden, eating insects caught on the wing in mid-air and on the ground. Oh, isn’t The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains glad to have all these birds here helping him with his summer garden?

The hummingbirds and their young zoom and dart, loop and twirl through the apple trees, past The Man’s head as he sits on his porch. They perform their acrobatic aerial displays all day long, drinking from the feeders, fighting and playing.

In the morning, when he steps outside with his cup of tea and walks across the dewy grass into the rows of his garden, as his vegetables awaken and yawn toward another summer day, and he sees Broken Wing and his family scurrying among the garden rows, eating insects, and the tree swallows twitter overhead, catching insects in the air, and the purple finches sing their intense and liquid songs, and robins cluck across the lawn, and mourning doves low, and chickadees scold; and above all, when the ravens have come from their lofty aeries to the east again this morning, to see what’s changed since yesterday—and, oh, how they croak and chortle among themselves, editorializing on what The Man has done—and when, high above the ravens, the red-tailed hawk, who has left her nest to hunt—her nest, which is in the yellow birch, which hangs out over the waterfall just beyond the garden, where the deep woods begin—when the red-tailed hawk hunts and cries, and all those other birds sing, and The Man wanders among the rows of his various green friends stretching themselves into the summer, toward what they were meant to be, and the day dawns peaceful and calm and warm, then… The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains thinks about his life here in this place, thinks about his loneliness and how he moves through his days without another of his kind, and he smiles to himself, and says, “It’s okay. Right now, at least, it’s okay.”

At times like these, The Man Who Lives Alone in the Mountains’ whole self goes out of himself and into the birds, the trees, the sky, his vegetables, his apples, his grapes and blueberries, the chipmunks in the yard, the wild turkeys, the hawks, the deer and moose, the gravel in the driveway, even the red squirrels and woodchucks he has shot and killed; his self goes out of himself, and into all those things outside himself, and he loses himself. He disappears.

Broken Wing and his family are now almost a daily occurrence in the garden.

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