As Silent As An Owl
An experimental merge of music and poetic language following the sensory experiences of nature and a dead bird.
I know the smell of a dead animal.
The first time was in my grandparents’ barn. The place was a mess, and we never found it.
In Amsterdam, after the rain washes over the city, you can smell it again.
It could be a bird, a rat, a cat.
It could be up in the trees, or under a car.
Sometimes I come across a corpse, flattened on the bike lane’s concrete, and always, I can’t help but shriek.
If you cycle outside of the city, and into the fields where wild geese and crows live aside cows and sheep, you can smell it again. This time not because of the rain but because of the farm trucks spreading manure on the land. Both for the soil. Same matter.
Last night there was a rainstorm.
I wake up in the morning and go downstairs, open the window and greet the tree. It is so close to me I can almost shake its hand. I know I can’t, but still, I lean in, and let the cold air settle on my face.
Breathing in coolness, waiting for the tingle on the tip of a cheekbone to call me back inside.
But something keeps me alert a few more seconds.
Everything is wet outside and I can smell it once more.
There is a dead animal in the courtyard.
But this time, I won’t look for it. I stay as silent as a grave, until a flock of cranes flies over the tree and I’s heads. I hear my lover whistling. I close the window and we have breakfast.
I’ve decided on a dead bird, too scared to admit it could be a dead cat. Is it still up in the tree in front of my window? Or does it lay on the ground, muffled in the clean wet dirt? I am reminded of the birds traveling, and I wonder if it was one of them.
The tree, the flock, a partner.
I think of a passage of a poem by Nâzim Hikmet Ran, which is printed on a piece of paper on my desk:
« To live, free and single like a tree
but in brotherhood like a forest -
this longing is ours. »
Now I am replacing the word ‘tree’ by ‘bird’ and ‘forest’ by ‘flock’. And I try to remind myself that although atoms don’t touch each other, their interaction creates life. That the feather and the leaf are not floating electrons, but exist because of each other. And I do too.
In one world.
The prehistoric bugle of cranes flying south.
The airplane rumbling, and it’s so close to me.
The death of a bird.
As silent as an owl. As swift as a moth.
My lover’s whistle.
They all speak the same words. Telling me to trust the wind for guidance.