How Birds Die

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I was sitting, waiting in my car, in the gravel parking area of a small farm stand in a rural town near mine. My friend had gone inside to buy a bag of birdseed.

To my left were thick woods, tall trees of maple, oak, and shagbark hickory, and dozens of other species, no doubt, if I'd gone in to look. A cool breeze seemed to come from the dark shade below the treetops, the wood moist even in the arid month of August. As I turned to look straight ahead, I saw a man digging a post hole on the edge of a meadow bright with goldenrod and Joe Pye. The sound his shovel made when it hit the ubiquitous Connecticut rocks was the only interruption to the birdsongs filling the air.

One small, gray bird caught my eye. He soared, then came down and flew horizontally over the meadow. Then suddenly, he dropped to the earth.

The man looked down, then up again, then down. My head followed his the way heads do in a tennis match. The man moved to where the bird went down, but seemed to find nothing. The bird did not rise from the earth.

That's the way I'd like to go, I think--in mid-flight, drop my body like a piece of baggage to the ground below, and keep on flying.
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