we have a huge overgrown evergreen bush obscuring our view of the front yard from three side by side windows. although we have lost the overall view of our bird feeder and yard, we have a wonderful view of the goings on inside the bush all winter.
our most frequent visitor is the cardinals who love low, lying bush and trees and tangle and thickets. a good place to spend the cold winter winds blowing from the north across the lake and whipping waves that crash and splash the shoreline, a good place in the pale winter sun to sit in the afternoon and watch the snow falls sparkle and tumble and jewel the evergreen. there the cardinal couple spent the winter nights. sitting silent and small in a prairie night.
this day it is just the male cardinal who hides in the bush. the mate was found dead in the yard some time late fall. no sign of why this tragedy occurred. maybe the cats, maybe hit one of our windows and fell there. just a fatal mystery brooding cold in a quarter moon still night. Christmas eve.
leaving the male in splendid red formal dress alone in the evergreen bush awaiting spring. when the dance will begin again. his song will again call for a female to share his evergreen bush world.
always have been two there. for years and years and years. sometimes they made their nests and raised babies in the gazebo because i left the door open for days on end, and then once they started the nesting cindy would not let me shut the door until the young ones were gone, some young ones were lost to the cats. many were raised in the gazebo.
the red of a cardinal in a winter scene is where god and art combine. beauty and nature intertwined. the boldness of the red. the excitement of a rich claret exoticness in a stark black and white nebraskan winter morning. the song of spring inspired by cardinal longing. the chirping incessant staccato in a cold winter evening, under a crimson and blue sunset, a small sad chatter of loneliness.
the male cardinal keeps active, the first at the feeder in the morning, taking control, strutting until the crows come and vandalize the food supply. the cardinal heads into the evergreen to watch the pillaging and noise and shadows of black cawing wings from a safe perch. he keeps track of the squirrels drawn to the Christmas critter feast. chattering and chasing each other witless as they come down from the trees to root about the base of the feeder to find the crows scattered crumbs. juncos and brown creepers are his friend and all can sit side by side sharing bread. but a yellow shafted flicker abruptly scatters the crowd and loudly laughs a metallic manic sound of possession. but the cardinal is always the first back to the platform when things calm down, between flights of late season robins and quiet and reclusive waxwings and the sputterings of random sparrows.
always one of the last birds to roost now, flitting from low tree to bush, loudly voicing the coming of another freezing night of windless calm. his chip chip chip song his alert call to no one but himself now. no answering chip chip to calm him as he settles into his dark perch.
waiting out another valley winter solitude
in a christmas tree in formal wear with a bandit’s mask.
kenneth d. bay, excerpt: songs of the new millennium, olddog/newtricks
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