orinthology

Yesterday I had the front window in my office open... I was looking at the sunset.



We recently discovered a nest of sparrows in the ivy outside the window.

This interests our cat Birdie greatly.

Last night Lily said she fears a bird will fly into the house. That'll never happen, I said.

Today I came home after work and flung open the windows to the great wild wind that had kicked up in the afternoon. I pulled out the Charlie Parker box set I had recently retrieved from storage in Brooklyn and had been waiting for the right moment to slip into, sat down at the typewriter, and began to type up edits on a couple of new poems.



Birdie, as always, sat out on the windowsill, getting some air. Just when the first of three takes of Orinthology from Parker's March 1946 session came on, the wind kicked up and blew an adjacent window shut and Birdie spooked and fell off the windowsill down onto the brick walk below. I bolted the house and scooped her up. She was shaken, a couple scrapes on the chin.

So I brought Birdie back upstairs, let her go in the house, and heard Juju in the office bashing around over the second take of Orinthology. But it wasn't Juju. It was a bird that had flown in the window. Luckily, it didn't take me long to shoo it out. Luckily, I got there before one of the cats got murderous.

Such a strange confluence of events, all these birds, misplaced, getting into spills, acting recklessly, all at once one afternoon.