To Bring You a Poem
The poet weaves together a meditation with the birding journal of a soldier in Iraq named Jonathan Trouern-Trend. The result? Well, it’s a good poem, and those can’t simply be summarized. To me it becomes commentary on the strange and uncanny juxtapositions that result from war, new technology, and the way both pull people half-way ‘round the world, sometimes in the second it takes to click a mouse, sometimes the long real journey of a soldier who finds beauty in a place most Americans see as barren and murderous.
I won’t put it all here. That would be cheating—or a copyright violation—or something evil. But if you click to read more, you will find roughly the last 2/3 just around the corner: “Click, Click, Click.”
Click. Click. Click. Links on my screen
lead to French scientists waiting for the swallows
to arrive, to announce another spring,
but the birds are missing, their numbers"decreasing 87%
in the last 13 years," which makes me think
of a thirteen-year-old I know who says, when he grows up,
he's going to be a sniper.
Wood pigeons everywhere.
They power up at a 45 degree angle, then swoop down,
flight path in the shape of a sine wave,
almost like they're doing it for fun.
I suppose it must be fun—the boy
and all kinds of people playing online-
world games, battling computer-controlled monsters
and each other. Why else would they spend
$800 million a year on virtual add-ins—
$300 for Boots of the Storm
or $625 for a Black Plated Neck Collar—
buying more strength for their animated character.
On our convoy one of the Humvees had a flat.
We set up a defensive perimeter
with our weapons pointing out.
Ten feet from me, a pair of crested larks,
the male dancing, displaying.
Displayed for me: ACTION ALERT!
HQ CALLING CHRISTINE RHEIN!
on the cover of The Military Book Club catalog,
and inside—"This Season's Best . . . A Brand New
Take on Wars . . . Tank Girls: In and Out
of Uniform . . . The Sexy Side of Soldiering."
As I was watching some wood pigeons
a pair of F-16s came tearing down the runway,
afterburners going, the noise incredible,
the birds unfazed.
On the radio this week, I listened
to the author of Why Birds Sing—
"Because they must," he said,"and because they love to"—
his clarinet recorded in an Australian rainforest,
a wild lyrebird joining the improvisation,
the give and take and abandon,
music titled"Pillow of Air."
Mission in the desert.
A crested lark hovering 100 feet off the ground
singing its heart out.
So why not write about the strawberry finches
building a nest outside my front window,
the way one of them—burden of a long, complicated twig
in its beak—tried to find a big enough entrance,
dense needles blocking each effort, the finch
ramming the twig and itself against the branches
over and over, until it slipped deep into the green,
the bush quivering from the work of weaving.
Near an amphitheater from Alexander the Great's time,
a black-crowned night heron, a few little egrets . . .
my first laughing dove.
Christine Rhein
The Gettysburg Review
Winter 2006
And from me, may this and every season bring you joy, especially when you least expect it.
Oscar