The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Wild Geese Flying As we took a walk down our lane the other night, we heard the wild geese sending out their raucous calls so high that we could not catch a...
...In fact, all that came to us was a succession of sharp cries far up in the distance...
...The brown thrashers practically forced us into this position so that we could observe their domestic arrangements...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Wild Geese Flying As we took a walk down our lane the other night, we heard the wild geese sending out their raucous calls so high that we could not catch a gleam of their bright colors by the light of the stars or the moon...
...The day's most satisfying beauty would come when the West was aflame with indescribable glory...
...And there, as the afternoon shadows lengthened, listening to the bird chorus amid the flowers, we read the best poetry in the world...
...But the tiny humming bird aroused my greatest concern...
...When I see them hopping securely and contentedly between the garden rows, I wonder whether this year they remember hopping happily behind my hoe in another spring —hoping to turn up a nice fat worm for lunch or breakfast...
...But there is still a wide and lush field for our poets of the future...
...And then the old north wall proved an accommodating refuge from every point of view...
...For many seasons, he has not failed to find his way back to our garden...
...Yet I am told that each autumn he makes his way across the Gulf of Mexico on his way to Chile and Brazil...
...The song of the thrush, in particular, united with the poetry of the masters, stirred the heart...
...We could look across the north lawn, turned into luscious golden green by the slanted rays of the afternoon sun, and see farther away on the edge of the deep dark woods the thrushes making their short, sharp excursions into the sunlight...
...We first saw him this year, fluttering against our picture window, fascinated by his own reflection, balanced in the air without moving a fraction of an inch...
...Indeed, the scantiest of investigations revealed to us that our birds have furnished symbols for many American poets...
...in all their various forms and colors, they flock through American poetry...
...The more one thinks about birds and the life of man, the more certain one becomes that there is an important connection between these two inhabitants of the earth...
...Thus we went in search of American experiments in this field and found that there has been no lack of effort among our own poets...
...That weird cry of the migrating geese is hard to forget...
...What we need is more sensitive appreciation on the part of our people...
...Summer is heralded, of course, by many birds besides the ranging ducks and geese...
...Our friends the birds are counted in the billions, but their importance is not dependent upon their numbers...
...Enjoying these three together proved to be a pleasure beyond expression...
...Inevitably, this led us to talk of the same influences in American poetry...
...We are piling upon our bookshelves endless scientific volumes about the denisons of the air, and our legislatures are heaping up laws to protect and encourage them...
...This summer we fell into the habit of reading poetry under the shadow of the old north wall...
...Finally he decided there was no profit in this activity so he darted away, almost invisibly, only to be rediscovered among the roses...
...He was no larger than my little finger, and his strong wings revolved so fast that they were invisible...
...The song of the thrush led us into an international discussion about birds and poetry, so one day we took to our wall retreat that prime collection of English verse, the Oxford Book...
...He had kept his engagement with us over the breadth of continent and water...
...He used to eye me with a knowing look as if we had collaborated on a plot...
...We must have our counterparts for Shakespeare, Burns, and Shelley and Keats...
...Between these hegiras had come all the changes, all the growth and all the differences in form and color which constituted what we call summer...
...There was one robin in particular...
...We had never realized before how large a part the songs of the birds played in the inspiration of the loveliest of English poetry...
...It carried our minds back to another night in April when a similar succession of cries told us that these Canadian geese had taken passage from some warmer spot in the Southland to a quite different location north of the Great Lakes...
...Our intimate garden visitors—the cardinals, bluejays and song sparrows—also make long flights from the South to Canada or Greenland or Alaska, although some of them stay with us the year round...
Vol. 47 • November 1964 • No. 24
