Graveyard Dirt: Two Worlds and In-between

A Tailor Made Hole

Across the street in the Murder House a family of tiny cheap-cheap birds have made their home behind an air vent leading into the attic. Through evergreen boughs I can see the hole the parents created in the lower right corner of the grate where they swoop out in sharp nosedives and fledglings, unsure, loiter around the opening, curious and wary of the world on the other side of slotted bars.

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(The BLESS THIS HOME image's framed by feathery fronds of eternal summer, bobbing, bowing and trembling in the breeze, moving but never obscuring, shaking but never distracting. Alive, perfect, a living, breathing point of focus, funneling attention to the blemish in the horizontal pattern, a literal "hole in the wall" that's not always perfectly centered in nature's changing picture, but close enough to make a point - LOOK, WATCH, SEE, UNDERSTAND.)

Yesterday there was a frantic explosion of feathers and wings which fought against the damaged air vent. A fat puffball of down hovered an inch below the hole, beating its wings against the immovable barrier. After several long seconds of struggling it dropped - free falling from exhaustion - before finding the strength to spread its wings and fly to safety.

Sometimes it'd rest on the ceramic tiles of the roof. Sometimes it'd rest on the ceramic tiles of the porch. Sometimes it rest in neighboring trees. Sometimes it'd rest just inches below the hole to its home, clinging to the grooves and protrusions of the concrete and pebble siding. Despite the variants of sometimes, despite the recurring failure there was only one poignant "always" - it always tried again, despite all of the "sometimes".

"COME ON, BABY, YOU CAN DO IT, YOU CAN DO IT," I breathed into the office/computer room's window, fogging up the glass with my vocalized encouragement. I stood and offered imaginary hands for it to perch on. I stood and gently wrapped my hands around its desperate, fighting body to guide it into the hole. I stood and worried; wishing, guiding, encouraging, pushing and goading the baby bird. The only thing more relentless than its driven nature to survive was my will for it to succeed.

"Maybe it's too big to fit through the hole now," Italics wondered as we watched it struggle and fight, attempt and rest, the cycle never ending and never breaking.

Maybe it's too big to fit through the hole now never occurred to me. I spent an entire afternoon pacing and watching, worrying and "helping" and it never occurred to me, once, that I was forcibly pushing it into a hole that it just wouldn't fit through. All that time spent cheering was cheering for something futile, something that wasn't going to happen. (And if it DID happen - or even partially happened - it'd happen to the very possible detriment of the fledgling; and there I was forcing, pushing, jamming it on.)

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Sometimes things just don't fit, and the solution isn't struggling and fighting under the pretense of "maybe, eventually" - it's creating a new hole, a tailor made hole, that fits //exactly//.