Saved by the Birds. Again.

Waning gibbous Hunters Moon
Rising impossibly far to the northeast, 
late in the evening on this the final night of October.
Winter moon following path of summer sun, 
(But does the sun ever rise way up there? 
Yes, it does. In May.) 

A sauna tonight and a couple of dips in the icy water, wow. 
Wow? Is that the best you can do? Yep. Wow. 

There are two pairs of birds I lean on nowadays. 
To buoy me up, to move me out of my own head,
to carry the day. 

Mid-May through the end of September it’s the ospreys 
in their nest a quarter mile east of here.
Fishing, raising fledglings – a pair this year – 
and in the final days of autumn, flying away. 

And then, on the seventeenth of October,
two grey-morph gyrfalcons returned to save my day.

I was alone here, and dour, and whiny, and grim. 
There was work, and there was the lunatic down south, and there was, well, all kinds of stuff.

I was wrestling to fire up a balky generator, 
our trusty windmill having finally, after thirteen years of faithful service, 
succumbed to a 45-knot gale and 
packed it in, had the biscuit, bit the dust, went tits up, (take your pick),
and yes, I know it’s a first world problem but hey, it’s a problem nonetheless.
And it was something else to moan about that morning. 

And there they were, right overhead, wheeling and stooping and harassing the ravens who cowered in the branches of the tallest spruce.
Gray-white falcons of the far north. Come to be with us for the winter ahead. Ptarmigan-eaters extraordinaire. 
Hello. Welcome. How was your summer?

And like I say, my day was saved. My week. 
The rest of my month. 

The ospreys were gone, but the gyrfalcons were back. 
Down from somewhere north, Ellesmere or Victoria Island?
Someplace where in coming months
it will soon be dark for ten or fifteen weeks straight, 
and impossible for them to hunt their dinner.

I stood and watched them, and the generator and windmill, the lunatic and the wars and all else,
were erased, nonexistent -- poof.  

And after they flew away to the west, some old lines from Snyder came to mind:

“In this burning, muddy, lying,
Blood-drenched world
that quiet meeting in the mountains
cool and gentle as the muzzles of 
three elk, helps keep me sane.”

	-- For the Boy Who Was Dodger Point Lookout Fifteen Years Ago, from The Back Country, by Gary Snyder, published 1957.