Tunable Silver on My Father's Birthday

". . . And shall we leap the trees as light as birds?" 

(from A Nest of Birds by Theodore Roethke)

Tui - Parson's bird. Photograph: Doug Beynon. 

Today is my father's seventy-ninth birthday. 79 is a grand number, I think.

Dad took this photograph of my resident tui sipping sugar water from the coconut chalice that hangs in my front garden. Not really someone wired to sit still for very long, Dad  demonstrates enormous patience out in nature, especially when it comes to birds. When he and Mum last came out to New Zealand, he would spend many happy hours (often with his camera at hand) sitting contentedly on the porch or out in the garden observing the antics of the native birds. 

According to the ornithologist, W. H. Oliver, the bellbird was undoubtedly the chief performer in the chorus described by Joseph Banks when Captain Cook entered Queen Charlotte Sound during the first voyage of discovery. “I was awakened by the singing of the birds ashore, from whence we are distant not a quarter of a mile. Their numbers were certainly very great. They seemed to strain their throats with emulation, and made, perhaps, the most melodious wild music I have ever heard, almost imitating small bells, but with the most tunable silver imaginable. . .”

How perfectly Banks described the song of the bellbird - korimako - a small, spirited, olive-green treasure with an unforgettable voice. Each morning, when I open up the front door and head outside to feed the birds, the same little creature launches ebulliently into song. I reply with my raspy-by-comparison greeting. We've been doing this for a couple of years now; it's become so much a part of our daily ritual that he has graciously copy/pasted my paltry two note offering into his personal repertoire. Imagine that. . .  These days (and Dad, this little anecdote is especially for you), when I head out on my walks around the neighbourhood or down to the jetty, I call to him and he answers from the treetops. Oh, my heart. What  sweetness there is in this daily 'call and answer' conversation with this dear, listening bird. A daily miracle, really.  

Mum and Dad loved waking to the bellbird's song while they were here; so I'm re-posting a short recording I made some time ago when the birds and I were still practicing our 'tunable silver' ritual. Dad, herewith your Happy Birthday anthem. . .  

One last little ditty. . . Back home in the UK, my parents live in a home surrounded by orchards, hops farms and woodlands, so yes, their garden is year-round home to a large population of birds. This pheasant and his wife are regular visitors. Considering their very great age (ha - just teasing), my parents are actually pretty savvy when it comes to computers (Mum even has a laptop and Skype!) so it was no surprise when Dad named this handsome and audacious fellow Broadband?! Broadband, you ask? Yes - Broadband. Don't you just love it?! It hadn't occurred to me till now that Bluetooth might suit the pheasant's wife nicely. . .  

Broadband - 'Dad's' pheasant - Raggleswood, Kent. 

Photograph: Doug Beynon

Dad crossing the Hooker River per suspension bridge, Mount Cook Reserve, NZ 2009

Invisible grace

Things are finding their place; a sense of poise returning.

A sideways slip of the pencil

and crossed lives may find

that by some invisible grace

they come to settle

on holy ground... *

The 'smush' that's been me recently has taken off and rolled on down the hill. . . splosh, into the harbour she went. Thank you and fare thee well, I say. Timing-wise, this bodes well. There are seven days between now and the day I turn fifty (I love the word 'turn') and I'm happy to report that my anticipation for this next half-century is mounting.

These are the last of the Moeraki pics for now; rock faces, line drawings, hard-soft edges. That day by the sea was a very great gift.

SOMETHING NEW

I have a newfound taste for lightness

albumen moon

mood stone

tone poem

I have a newfound lightness of taste

late wind

white ground

round sound

CB

*lines from the poem Consider - CB 2007

*

... to give you some idea of the size of these boulders, here's a pic of Annette & I embracing one.

Pound on the star

". . . Oh, quake!

Pound on the earth: dull and earthen its echo,

deadened and muffled by what we undertake.

Pound on the star: 'twill disclose itself for your sake!

Pound on the star: invisible number signs

are realized; the capacities of an atom

are multiplying in space. The tone shines.

And what here is ear to its fulsome

stream, is also somewhere eye: this dome

arches itself somewhere in designs. . . "

from Music

by Rainer Maria Rilke

(Thank you, Annette)

Dreaming rocks

This one

and this one

so intricately made.

(not) Petrified

I'm taking a 'rest and research' day today and heading up the coast to Moeraki* where my good friend Annette (who lives three hours North of Dunedin) and I will meet to walk this beach

&

wrap arms around these spectacular boulders.

*Moeraki is a Maori word meaning sleepy sky or sleep by day. South Island legend suggests that these boulders were formed when kumara (sweet potato) brought across the sea on the Arai-te-uru canoe were washed overboard and petrified on the beach.

Ah, down to sand and salt water's edge...