Birdy

over, all day long. At the critical moment, Birdie wants to be fed and Alfonso can’t bringhimself to do it or doesn’t know how. Frustrated, I put Birdie back in her cage and leave the room.
    That evening, I let Birdie out while I’m drawing a new design for my wing. I’m at my desk, my desk lamp is the only light and it’s practically dark in the aviary. Still, there’s enough light so I can see Alfonso hanging on the side of the cage. He starts singing, low, smoothly. When he stops, Birdie begins whimpering again, fanning her wings. At last he does it. He feeds her through the bars. It sounds so satisfying. He throws back his head to bring up food from his crop, then gently puts it into her open beak. With each beakful, there’s a rise in tiny peeps from Birdie, and then, a moment’s pause while she swallows. He keeps it up till he’s given all he has. Birdie continues her insistent peeping and shimmying around so he flies down for more food. He comes back and does it all again.
    After this, he flies onto the top of her cage and sings. He sings as if he’s trying to say something. There’s all of asking in his voice and not the ‘Come here, Baby’ sound he’d been giving us up till now. Birdie sits perfectly still and listens. I do too. There’s tremendous variety in the paths of his singing. There are certain kinds of things he does well; these he repeats but at different volumes or different tones and in all kinds of variations.
    There’s open air in his song, the power of wings and the softness of feathers. He’s telling how it will be if she’ll only let him put his little dong into her little hole. It’s clear as any love song. He sings of things he could never have seen or known in the aviary at Mr Lincoln’s. These things must be memories in his blood carried through in his song. There’s the song of rivers and the sound of water and the song of fields and seeds in their natural places. It’s a song I’ll never forget. It’s with this song I began to understand something of canary. Canary isn’t a language like ours with individual words, or words put into sentences. In the singing, you let your mind go, not think, and it comes to you, clearer than words. It comes as if you’d thought it yourself. Canary is much more feeling, more abstract than any language. Listening to Alfonso that night I found out things I knew must be but I’d never known. It was the song of someone who knows how to fly.
    The next day’s Sunday and after mass I let Birdie into the aviary. She glides down and hops over to the food. Alfonso sees her and swoops down immediately. I think it’s going to start all over again, but he stands on the other side of the food dish and eats a few seeds. Birdie hops to the bath and starts her morning ablutions. Alfonso stands near by to watch and when she sprinkles water she showers him. He flies up to the first perch, then flies down again. He hops to the bath dish and jumps in. He really splashes, scattering water all over the aviary, tossing it up over his back with his beak in a way Birdie’d never done. Then, they get in the water together, in and out, until there’s no water left in the dish. They both fly around the aviary wildly, drying off. Birdie’s entered into the spirit of this frantic bathing style. The feathers around Alfonso’s beak are ruffled and you can barely see his eyes. He’s gotten himself so wet, his feathers are heavy, hanging from his body. He looks really bedraggled. He keeps flying back and forth long after Birdie’s quit and is cleaning up. He rubs his wet face against the perch and against the bars of the cage. He flies down and rubs his face on the wall, of all things. It’s obvious he doesn’t bathe of ten and doesn’t like it when he does.
    At last he’s clean and dry. They both eat again and she starts whimpering and giving her ‘feed-me’ signal. He starts to feed her but this gets him so excited he begins singing and then goes into a little dance. He dances around in circles beside her while he holds a single note. He dips his head up and down, stomping his feet to some hidden rhythm. I figure, here we go again.
    While he’s doing this, Birdie begins her own little dance. She’s squatting, whimpering, twisting around to keep lined up with him while he dances. All in one movement, Alfonso flies up over her and hovers while he lowers his dong under her upraised tail and into her hole. It lasts only a few seconds and he’s