Songbird

               The wanderer walked a winding way, whistling into a flute of reeds. A springtime sun shone kindly on the green fields and roving streams while overhead white clouds formed vistas of fleeting timelessness. Intermittently he piped happy or mournful tunes. Somehow he felt he borrowed them from simplicity, from an innocent part of himself he thought he’d forgotten, a more honest, a truer self. In dreams he feared he’d lost that self, that it was and would be for him always only a memory, a refuge he’d never find again.

                Bu in the sunlight, with the flowers and the green good earth, perhaps it was hope that set him piping tunes.

                Yesterday, or was it years ago, a songbird had appeared to him, asked, “You strange creature, why do you pipe your songs?”

                He had smiled shyly at the bird, which was blue and marked with white and black, “I don’t know, little bird. Why do you sing your songs?”

                “Because,” the bird answered proudly, “I have a beak. I must sing when I’m happy and when I’m sad. It would be against my nature not to sing.”

                “Perhaps we’re not so different, beautiful bird!” laughed the piper. They had spent the rest of the day together, the bird fluttering from tree to tree and singing to the man below, who piped harmonies up to her in return. When night fell, the man slept in the shadow of a fruit tree while the songbird dozed in the branches above.

                “My dreams troubled me last night,” he’d told the bird upon waking, the grass shining with dew.

                “What did you dream?”

                “I can’t remember,” he confessed, “All I know is that I was taken by a great terror and felt such cold as if there would never be warmth or tenderness again.”

                The bird alighted on his shoulder and sang a comforting tune in reply. They went along together, and soon enough the terror of the bad dream was forgotten.

                Around midday they ate together, feasting on berries and a loaf of bread the piper carried in his sack. Together the man and the songbird laughed and sang, and the grass, led by the wind, seemed to dance to the sound of their music.

                With a terrible cry and a flash of shining talons, a great eagle appeared, taking in and devouring the tiny bird. She had not even the time to cry out.

                “Oh, you terrible eagle!” the piper shouted with such pain in his voice as if the predator had rent his own flesh, “How could you do this? How could you eat my helpless friend?”

                High above, the great bird circled about to land in a nearby tree. Its eyes were hard, but not harsh, its beak cruel, but not unfeeling. The eagle sat, perched silently for a time.

                “Man, do you hate me for what I've done?” he asked in a voice ancient as the roots of the hills.

                “Yes, I hate you, you horrible eagle. I, I’ll kill you for what you've done! I’ll climb that tree and kill you myself!” the piper cried, grasping at the tree’s lower branches.

                “You will not bring back the songbird that way.”

                “I don’t care,” the piper answered as wet tears ran down his face, “You’re an evil creature and you’ve got to be destroyed!”

                “So you say, because I’ve eaten your friend,” spoke the eagle. His eyes softened as he asked, “But man, was the songbird evil because she ate grains and little berries?”

                The piper looked with terror into the eagle’s eyes, and his limbs shook as he climbed, “No, of course not. But you’re not like her, you’re a monster!”

                “I must eat if I’m going to live,” the eagle answered, “I have a stomach. It would be against my nature not to eat.”

                The man wept bitterly to hear this, sat on a branch and beat his fists furiously against the trunk, “But I don’t want to accept that. I want to call you evil and hate you.”

                “Even if it means blinding yourself to the truth?”

                The piper sat, weeping quietly among the limbs and leaves.

                The eagle took flight with a few words of departure, “Man, it did not start with me, and it will not end with me. I will remember your friend.”

                The wanderer remained in the tree for a time, mourning for the lost songbird and pondering the eagle’s words. The eagle spoke truly, he thought, but how ever to accept it. How to live and love and feel deeply the beauty of the world when all about there reigned this terrible wrongness? How to live with pain and loss and still have the courage to feel? How to… how to?

                Today, walking along with his pipe, the memory brought a tear to his eye. But in the sunlight, with the flowers and the green good earth, perhaps it was hope that set him piping tunes.