8 November 04

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

This morning as I was getting my bike out along the driveway past all the beekeeping equipment on my way to work—in a hurry, I was late—a rock wren popped out into a small patch of sunlight.

I have a special fondness for wrens, as I mentioned recently in a comment over at Via Negativa. They’re small, they’re not very brightly colored, but they are cheerfully busy. They chatter. They scold. They have personallity.

Then, coming home tonight, way after dark after a dinner in Sacramento commiserating with some friends about Tuesday’s results, I heard some geese calling overhead through the fog. I’m pretty sure they were white fronted geese. Winter is here: our valley is flooded in parts and the waterfowl take over. Switching places with the ducks, they move out in to the fields to feed at night.

It is hard to stay in a place of despair with this around me: a rock wren and night-feeding geese.

Posted by at 08:08 PM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. Nature lifts my spirits also, Pica.

    — Jenny    8. November 2004, 23:41    Link
  2. I’ve always wondered if the name of your site was taken from the book. Is it?

    I love wrens, too. For something so small they certainly have a lot of gumption.

    I also simply like the name, “w-r-e-n” .Those people who first thought up bird names must have been poetic geniuses.

    — butuki    9. November 2004, 04:23    Link
  3. Butuki: Thanks. You’re right, wrens have “gumption.”

    Our blog name is taken from the first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem, below:

    “Hope” is the thing with feathers—
    That perches in the soul—
    And sings the tune without the words—
    And never stops—at all—

    And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
    And sore must be the storm—
    That could abash the little Bird
    That kept so many warm—

    I’ve heard it in the chillest land—
    And on the strangest Sea—
    Yet—never—in Extremity,
    It asked a crumb—of me.

    — Pica    9. November 2004, 04:31    Link
  4. Come to think of it, the title of the book “Hope is the Thing With Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds”, by Christopher Cokinos did come from a quote that I hadn’t remembered. Have you read the book? For both you and Numenius, as bird lovers, I recommend it. It is a love letter to all those birds, like the Carolina Parakeet and Passenger Pigeon, that no longer exist. A sad book, but the tribute is what makes it important.

    Thanks for your comment about my own post. Publish it, huh? I haven’t a clue where such an article could be published.

    — butuki    9. November 2004, 05:46    Link
  5. Birds with personality, small blessings, moments of unasked-for grace. I’m glad you found such a moment.

    A bird is a strange thing if you stop and think about it and if you stop for long everything’s a strange thing.

    — elck    9. November 2004, 07:16    Link
  6. “How wrong Emily Dickinson was! Hope is not the ‘thing with feathers.’ The thing with feathers has turned out be my nephew. I must take him to a specialist in Zurich.”
    —Woody Allen

    — Chris Clarke    9. November 2004, 18:58    Link
  7. I have just begun studying Emily Dickinson for my Leaving Cert (the most soul destroying of Irish exams!) and I was slightly confused by this poem. Although the poets actual content seems positve, I can’t help feeling that there’s an underlying sadness. The way the last lines are punctuated, the discription of hope using a negative “never” and the use of the word “yet” lead me to believe this. My teacher obviously disagrees. Am I just wrong?

    — Antoinette    29. January 2005, 02:53    Link

Previous: Next: