Wood Thrush As Ghost //as text//as diagnosis//as journal//as erasure//as poem//as Reddit forum//as haibun//as list//
Before: There was a thrush on the windowsill
when the man came in.
After: The thrush built a nest in the desk.
Before: The girl had not felt her body.
After: Therefore, could not feel the atrophy.
Before: Body parts hinged by tendon to bone.
After: Body parts separated to float up and
away. Hanging among the rafters of the old
home. A side of leg. An esophagus. Her
collarbone caught on ceiling. To lament the
organ lost: song.
Before: She had woken to the call of the thrush.
After: She could not sleep and lay in bed waiting
for the eh-oh-lay of the bird who saw it all.
Dilapitatia
Disorder Class: Obsession
-
- 1. Recurrent and persistent thoughts about dilapidated homes
- 2. Finds it difficult or unable to control the need to be near dilapidated homes
- 3. The obsession is associated with three or more of the following six symptoms (with at least some symptoms present for more days than not for the past 6 months)
- a. Fantasies of trespassing, insists that property and home are constructs
- b. Xanthoria and Ramalina, jarred
- c. Breaking glass windows to enter abandoned homes, only to undress in the roofless kitchen
- d. A box kept in the trunk of car containing a pinhole camera, a crowbar, a collection of wooden doorknobs
- e. Not able to accommodate
responsibilities such as work and family, instead, takes long road trips with maps marked with yellow
squares - f. Collects antique field guides
April 13th
Some people collect porcelain figurines. Some, tin photographs of other people’s families. Or masks once used for rituals, now hung on
walls, showcasing the flex of ownership (over
the dead! over the liminal!) interwoven into
elements of design, from kitsch to bohemian.
But to collect an entire home through a dark
chamber, this has required a certain
relationship to the art of trespass. {etymology:
cross, traverse, infringe, violate; euphemism
for “to die.”} The jump of a fence, a parallel
amble along a darkly wooded driveway, a swift
turn into a backroad pullout, waiting till cars
have passed. Behold!
The obsession with the dilapidated is as much
about eco-reclamation as it is about
recognizing the house as body. Roofs with long
exhales. Moss giving way to a shingled
meadow. Swifts in the chimneys, bats in the
walls. Doors contracted within their frame,
summer swelling, winter unhinging.
Sometimes, a vine like a fist around a throat,
and a long wait as the home drops to its knees.
Once, nothing but a brick fireplace. Out of its
mantle I found a sprawling rosemary bush, and
below, the dirt heavy hearth now a den of
foxes, little bones littered at the mouth.
I take to photographing the yellow ones. Butter
and flaxen against calla lilies and ferns. Creamy
peelings, the first owner’s (now dead, body in
the rural cemetery, unmarked) preference for
climbing roses, camellias now left unchecked.
The trembling arches of Japanese Snowballs
and in the backyards, the beautiful garden
sheds hugged by hellebores and foxgloves.
When I was a child there was a yellow house.
On the painted porch, a small wooden rolltop
desk that belonged to the original inhabitant of
the home. The rolling feature stuck open, each
stacked drawer exposed, like the inside of a doll
house. Here, I placed my findings from the
garden, the fragment of a fox skull, a northern
flicker’s orange feather, the tail of a lizard.
It’s hard to say when the nest was built. Grass,
sticks, mud, like a cup for eggs that eventually
appeared, speckled and river green. I recall that
the yolk was double hot in my mouth. I gulped
as the wood thrush pair looked on, my swallow exaggerated while they watched, though I can’t recall when or what they watched taken from me.
Erasure of Field Guide, Cornell’s All About Birds
Find This Bird
You’ll likely hear the Wood Thrush before you see it. The male sings his haunting, flute-like ee-oh-lay song from the lower canopy or midstory of deciduous or mixed eastern forests. To see Wood Thrushes, look for them foraging quietly on the forest floor and digging through leaf litter.
Conservation
Wood Thrush are still common throughout the deciduous forests of eastern North America, but populations declined by approximately 1.3% percent per year for a cumulative decline of about 50% between
1966 and 2019, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. Partners in Flight estimates a global breeding population of 12 million and rates them
14 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score. Wood Thrush is included on the Yellow Watch List for birds most at risk of extinction without significant conservation actions to reverse declines and reduce threats. It is one of the most prominent examples of declining forest songbirds in North America. Some of the steepest population declines have been along the
Atlantic Coast and in New England states where Wood Thrushes are most common. Habitat fragmentation on their breeding and wintering grounds is thought to be
one reason for their decline. Fragmented habitats may have lower quality food choices or expose nests to predators such as raccoons, jays, crows, and domestic or
feral cats, and to the Brown-headed Cowbird, which is a nest parasite. Wood Thrushes are also susceptible to the
effects of acid rain, which can leach calcium from the soil, in turn robbing the birds of vital, calcium-rich invertebrate prey. In Central America, the loss of
lowland tropical forests shrinks their winter habitat.
Behavior
One of the first songsters to be heard in the morning and among the last in the evening, the male sings his haunting ee-oh-lay song from an exposed perch in the
midstory or lower canopy. He uses the song, which carries through dense forest, to establish a territory that averages a few acres. Within days, a female initiates
pairing by enticing him to chase her in silent circular flights 3–6 feet above the ground. Between flights, the prospective pair shares a perch. After pairing, the female helps defend the territory from intruders. Low-level threat gestures like breast puffing, crest raising, and wing and tail flicking are usually enough. Among the alarm calls they give is a distinctive, sharp machine-gun-like sound that can be heard from far off. Wood Thrushes
forage by hopping through leaf litter on the forest floor, tossing leaves to expose insects or probing for litter-dwelling prey. While foraging, they frequently bob upright for a look around. Pairs are socially
monogamous, though extra-pair copulations are common. New pairs form each year.
The Wood Thrush is a consummate songster and it can sing “internal duets” with itself. In the final trilling phrase of its three-part song, it sings pairs of notes simultaneously, one in each branch of its y-shaped syrinx, or voicebox. The two parts harmonize with each other to produce a haunting, ventriloquial sound.
…………………………………………………………………………….
When I found
the little bird
dead, I baked pie
after pie and hung
banners from one tree
to the next
to celebrate the flight
in my hands,
the speckle breasted enthusiasm
of someone else,
who like me, wants
to mate
in the dark shadow
of bramble.
I find myself alive again
in the quiet
between a song
and your ears.
Lay down, let us
burn our mouths
on hot berries
as the death of birds
flies in and out of us,
my bed covered
in field guides.
Reddit Forum, Dead Poets Bird Club r/hereandnow: Only recently discovered birding while dead. I have noticed that the silence after bird song feels more pronounced now that I am dead. I am trying hard to listen, to let go of being heard. There is a tension between poet and birder, I feel an unresolved reckoning.
Newtotheblue 3 yrs ago
The bird teaches us to embrace death without reservation, to fully come dead to the
beauty of the moment.
Deadlikeyou 41 yrs go
Find ecstasy in death, the mere sense of dying is joy enough.
Warriorontheotherside 5 yrs ago
Wherever the bird flew with no feet,
she found trees with no limbs.
little_deaths 13 yrs ago
I want to death and feel all the shades, tones,
and variations of mental and physical
experience possible in my death. And I am
horribly limited.
Dancinginthisworld 52 yrs ago
Hold fast to death, for if death die, death is a
broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
little_deaths 13 yrs ago
I am not mystical: it isn’t/As if I
thought it had a spirit.
Irisintheafterlife 6 mo ago
Does it matter where the birds go?
Does it even matter what species they
are? They leave here, that’s the point,
first their bodies, then their sad cries.
littledeaths: I trespass stupidly. Let be,
let be.
Warriorontheotherside 4yrs ago
It is not our deaths that divides us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
{In order of appearance: Mary Oliver, Emily
Dickinson, Audre Lorde, Sylvia Plath, Langston Hughes, and Louise Glück. The words alive, live, life, living, and dreams replaced with death, dead, and dying.}
The wood thrush sings twice at once with a
double syrinx. From one side of his throat: to
mate. From one side of his throat: a mate.
Imagine being the last bird singing after all the
snails have disintegrated. The corrosion of
home is always multilayered. If you have a
home with rafters, look up. The spectral is heat
bound, rising. The wood thrush welcomes the
cowbird. Plays the ventriloquist. Trills metallic.
The looping call of
thrush, caught in the mouth of ghost,
ringing split throated
An incomplete list of thrush
species looping with types of ghosts:
Swainson’s
Myling
Nightingale
Dullahan
Hermit
Muma Pādurii
Green-cheeked
Genius loci
Scaly
Bodilima
Siberian
Egg
Song
Soucouyant
Kelly Gray lives in the redwoods, nine miles and seven fence posts away from the ocean. Most recently, her chapbook The Mating Calls //of the// Specter was selected for the Tusculum Review Chapbook Prize. Her writing can be found in Cream City Review, Southern Humanities Review, and Pithead Chapel, among other places. She is the recipient of the Neutrino Prize, the ArtSurround Cohort Grant, and a participant in the 2023 Kenyon Review Poetry Workshop. Gray’s collections, Instructions for the Animal Body (Moon Tide Press, 2021) and Tiger Paw, Tiger Paw, Knife, Knife (Quarter Press, 2022), can be found at writekgray.com.
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