I was teaching on Zoom when the bird flew in. If there’s any kind of multitasking I can get behind, it’s honing in on my student while tracking the bird zoom around the room. For a visually oriented person, I had to deal in a different currency than sight. The air murmuring on my neck. The bird’s occasional trilling. The thump of a small body hitting glass.
I guessed it was a house wren. Corruíra, the little brown bird known for building nests in crevices and small openings, and for thriving even in heavily human-altered environments. Once, we found one in the construction site that will be our future home: a nest within a nest. The corruíra moved so fast I barely saw the bird then, either.
Without my eyes, the peculiar experience of keeping tabs on the wren reminded me of how I sometimes write poems. I think through my body to conjure the shape of something. I believe in this process and constantly stake my faith in it. But how would I write poems without this kind of sight? If my mind’s eye was obliterated? I would like my “I” to fail, just once.
Maybe what I’m trying to do is touch the hard problem of consciousness and alter my state without doing drugs. And at the same time sidestep being a protagonist in the narrative of my life, all the while still fully showing up. To slip out of solipsism without disappearing entirely.
My lesson finally ended. Behind a gauzy curtain, the wren struggled against the glass window, mistaking it for a clear route to the blue outside. I did not lift the curtain. I turned off the lights and opened the doors wide, then closed my eyes and stood stock-still.
I knew the bird left when the stillness felt heavier. The silence thickened. I relished the senseless way I handled the situation. Foolish, on the one hand, because I could have caught the bird and released it outside the way I’ve always done. This is faster, more sure-fire. Instead (perhaps just this one time), I set the scene and let the wren decide.
Maybe the corruíra still tasted fear in my presence, sharp and metallic. Maybe not. Maybe the wren thought the glass suddenly became permeable. Maybe not. And maybe I myself became permeable, and the bird passed through me. Momentarily. Just this once.