Your response to the blackbirds in the shadow image has made my heart soar. Here is the paper collage image and the story that opens the first chapter of my book. It will give you an idea of why the photograph and your response mean so much to me. THANK YOU! ~ Once upon a time, just before dawn, out in the country called Wheat Ridge, Colorado, I was 4 years old. The nearest neighbors were across the street and a quarter of a mile away. The neighbors, my parents, my ten brothers and sisters were all asleep or not yet born. I was awake from a dream that told me to go outside and “Just listen.” Except for the stars, it was pitch black. It took a minute for my eyes to see the beginnings of blue defining the flat horizon of The Great Plains, to the East. In the West, there were distant stars, but not the outline of the Rocky Mountains, five miles away. I ran through the alfalfa field and rested under a row of Russian Olives. I listened to my heart and then I heard the birds, just a few at first. They were Meadow Larks mostly, answering one another, together, in the dark, miles apart. It was not an alarm, just a friendly wake up call. I wondered what the words were and wished that I could whistle, just enough to say, “Good morning.” A rooster crowed and the crows rose from their roost. They lit into the sky. The East was pink. The West was turning blue. The birds were now blacker than the sky. Starlings now flew where the stars had been. I could see the outline of the mountains and the trees, but not what lay beneath the black. I closed my eyes, so that I could better hear the birds. The volume was so loud I was convinced that every leaf on every tree had turned into one of the world’s hundred billion birds, each singing its own song. Perhaps it was only a million Mockingbirds. I couldn’t tell more or have cared less. I was overjoyed. So transfixed was I that it was all I could do just to hold the tune. I tried to think. What were they saying that they had so much to say and so wished to be heard? Were they just trying to wake up or were they discussing their dreams, from the night before, before they disappeared? Then my thoughts went away. My mind held only harmony. I held a note and it carried me through the trees and into thin air. The sound was everywhere. Everyone was singing all at once and then all at once it stopped. I opened my eyes and looked into the sun that had just cracked the horizon. I stared into the East, watching the Earth turn sunny-side up. I turned around to see the light of day on the scene that had held only sound. I could see everything now, a whole range of mountains, all of the trees and every single leaf. All of the birds had disappeared save a single Meadow Lark singing to someone unseen. As a boy of four, it was no more of a mystery that the birds had turned themselves back into leaves than any other mystery I had just witnessed. Like the fact that there were birds and trees, that the sun rose and that I was there to see and hear it all. I went to feed the chickens and collect the eggs. They were still warm. I looked back at the trees and then up to the sky. It was a beautiful robin egg blue. ~ The book is about remembering the wonder we knew as children, why it was important to forget and how great it is to remember! You can read the introduction, read a review and, if you wish, order the hardbound book, here: jerrydownsphoto/#why-you-were-born/1 It is also available as an eBook that you can order just like you would any other book. Just type in the title, Why You Were Born.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Jul 2014 01:25:51 +0000
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