Bird Totem

 

Sculpture, “Bird Totem” by Jan Johnson Doerfer,  jdoerfer@sbcglobal.net

      The artist writes: “This bird altar is an homage to the devastating decline in bird populations due to habitat loss, global warming, and pollution. In less than a human lifetime, we’ve lost almost a third of our birds.”

Narrative response by Kathy Swearingen

 

Driftwood

Wood edges softened by frozen

wind, sun, sand, time.

Feathers fastened at the base, like quills inside a pot of ink.

A bird’s head, with its distinctive long black beak, eyes me from the side.

Tell them, the bird says,

 

about the time creatures with feathers once lived

descended from dinosaurs.

Tell them we became hollow boned

migrated with the seasons

defied and soared above your gravitational pull

floated north, then south

thousands of miles every year

on thermal winds,

circling in broadening gyres

round and round we moved

together

in Autumn across the continents

until we found our place.

Tell them we were aerial architects

homes constructed

translated

from threads and twigs

straw

tawny grasses

translucent skin shed from copperheads

or wolf fur

soft as down.

Tell them

it was the gift of fire

given to your kind

generations gathered around your fires

for warmth, food, and stories

until your kind became wizards of alchemy

forged bronze with fire

spears, shields

combustion for engines, rockets,

molten steel for soaring skyscrapers.

Tell them those metal spires

those blinking lights

pricked, tore,

disfigured

night’s bright patines of gold

distorted True North

the Southern Cross.

Tell them their worship

of  the fire god

stoked the earth’s surface

into a wobbling top of heat

until the center could not hold.

Now a single white flecked feather frays

against the gray grain of a bleached frond of wood.

Tell them

they erased our kind

for theirs.

Tell them this totem stands

tribute

to our ancestors

who once ornamented

the earth

with beauty, industry, and song.

Kathy Swearingen, 2024