March 16, 2003

In the last few days I have watched mynas gathering materials for
their nests.

Yesterday I saw one pick up and carry off a big clump of dried
grass.

And then I saw another struggling with a big piece of napkin at the
side of the road.

Such optimism, beloveds, such optimism.

We went to the beach yesterday not in optimism but in avoidance
and spoke about the birds around us and their constant singing of
small songs, some of them ugly to us and some of them beautiful.

We were just talking because we could.

Because we could spend this time together in the sun and we knew
that was something that mattered but as we spoke of bird song we
also spoke of Bush's summit Sunday with the leaders of Britain,
Spain and Portugal in the Azores, and the prediction that there was
a less than one percent chance of avoiding war.

When we spoke of birds and their bowers and their habits of nest
we also spoke of the Israeli military bulldozer that ran over Rachel
Corrie, the mysterious flu that appeared in Hong Kong and had
spread by morning to other parts of Asia, Elizabeth Smart's return,
and Zoran Djindjic's death

We reclined as we spoke, we reclined and the sand that coated our
arms and legs is known for a softness that is distinctive in the
islands and the waves were a gentle one to three feet and a soft
breeze blew through the ironwoods and we were surrounded by
ditches, streams, and wetland areas, that serve as a habitat for
endangered water bird species.

There are other sorts of beauty on this globe, but this sort of beauty
is fully realized here.

This sort of beauty cannot get any more beautiful, any more
detailed, any more rich or perfect.

But the beach on which we reclined is occupied by the US military
so every word we said was shaped by other words, every moment
of beauty occupied.

We watched the planes fly overhead from the nearby airbase as we
spoke of birds and their bowers and their habits of nest and we
were also speaking of rolling start and shock and awe and two
hundred and twenty five thousand American forces and another
ninety thousand on the way and twenty five thousand British forces
and one thousand Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps combat
and support aircraft in the area.

And because the planes flew overhead when we spoke of the cries
of birds our every word was an awkward squawk that meant also
AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, UH-60 Black Hawk troop
helicopter, M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicle, M1A1 Abrams main
battle tank, F/A-16 Hornet fighter/bomber, AV-8B Harrier fighter
jet, AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter and that soon would
mean other things also, the names of things still arriving, the B-2
stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base, the B-52 bombers
that are now in Britain.




POEM ARCHIVE