Squawk! Titter, titter. Churreee! Their uncaged euphoria bursts through our open windows and the chatter continues as we sit over breakfast and coffee. Tools and planks lie scattered around us. We have nearly finished building the kitchen.
I ask you to make a birdhouse for our small garden.
Like this? you say. You draw a loose design with a contraband IKEA pencil.
No, the roof needs to be more pointy. We both laugh, because we’ve mated for life and share the same jokes.
We sit in our newly constructed river lounge and discuss what type of bird, exactly, we want to attract. It should tolerate human habitation, and it should eat aphids and caterpillars and other garden pests. I plug in these values into my smartphone’s iBird app and find titmouse, house sparrow, barn swallow and other synanthropes.
We decide we want a simple house, so you take out your tape measure and begin. Without thinking, I play some sample loops of bird calls. This lures the hummingbirds from their nests. Others follow –they crowd the ivy and thrum the thicket. A blackbird lands beside you and looks up with bright eyes. What are you building? she sings. Is it for me?
Issue 15 · June 2012
Table of contents
- Poetry
- The Museum of Gug
- Blackout
- Talus
- An Ancient Citizen’s Tweets From Athens, Greece
- Roman Haiku by Richard Kenney
- USA, an excerpt
- Long Distance with Camel
- Paengaroa Skype-fishing
- Two Poems by Nina Bahadur
- Gift of Nous
- Two Excerpts by Anne Germanacos
- Teresa of Avila Compares the Soul to a Palm Cabbage
- Views from Above
- Delphi
- Two poems by Karen Greenbaum-Maya
- Taking the First Shot After a Three-Year Absence
- Postcard Prose
- Travel Notes
