I love the songs the birds sing. And since I don’t know them by their names like my neighbor, John, who can spot a yellow breasted whatever driving along at fifty miles an hour, I name them by their sounds.

There’s Cheeber Cheeber, and Jimmy Jimmy, and the Bird Of Encouragement, who sings, “w’need ya, w’need ya.” Then there’s the cardinal, who reminds us to read the classic tragedies, “a writ tear, a writ tear.”

And the bird who flies from yard to yard warning faithful couples of the brashness of infidelity with, “peter cheater, peter cheater.” And there’s Catbird who really does sound like a cat, and is trying to fool me all the time. To the other birds, I try to say their calls back in my own words, but to the catbird I always say, “Shut up, Catbird.”

Sometimes they get their moniker by location. When I patched up a hole where my porch roof had been, a small flock of house wrens moved into the bushes around my garage. They are now officially known as driveway birds.

Since my friend, Timothy, the chiropractor on page 20 has entrusted the poetry to me, I leave you with these cleverly arranged words of a favorite bird poem:

MY, HOW THINGS GET AROUND
One bird told another
and he in turn, another, until
in no time, word was passed
half way ‘round the world;
and though the bluebird
could not communicate
the exact meaning
of the language, so foreign,
still he sang,
and the sense of the thing
was imparted;
and though the woman
did not know she was hearing it
in the bluebird’s song,
that secret thing
the man had told the nightingale
so far away
was imprinted on her heart,
and she felt it,
and put her hand over her breast,
and breathed in, and smiled;
and the man did not know
what the birds had done.

Cheerio Cheerio – Larry Berger. HashtagWV #94. October 2017