The Sparrow Drawer

The sandhill crane today. He no longer welcomes you to the exhibit, but he's still dancing. Photograph taken by me.

I love poetry. There's no art form that's better at conveying what it felt like to be in a certain place at a certain time.

With that in mind, here is "The Sparrow Drawer" by Canadian poet Diana Brebner, from her posthumous poetry collection The Ishtar Gate. The poem takes place in the old bird exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Most of the displays she describes no longer exist.

The Sparrow Drawer

I. The Sandhill Crane

The sandhill crane, in his glass case, performs

his nuptial dance. Jumping, bowing, and wildly

flapping, reads the museum description. Well,

aren't we all the same in love? This dead

male is frozen in the pose, on a bed of

stone. Thus, the museum welcomes us to its

permanent exhibit: Birds in Canada. When I

bring my daughters to the museum, because

it is cleaner and easier than a day in the

bush, they always ask to see the birds, or the

big animals. And I tell myself: this will

do them good. They know enough about mud,

rain, being hungry, no toilets, and wanting

to go home. In the real world, a bird is

always gone before my two-year-old can look.

Or, alternately, I can never find the great

blue herons they insist are really there.

II. Birds by Number

In the Eastern Hardwood Forest thirty-three birds

are mounted on log pedestals, each in a pose

that is meant to be life-like. I remind myself

these are dead bodies. I have no memory for

useful things, but I can remember my first

sighting of migrating snowbirds (Junco hyemalis)

in Algonquin Park, the Rose-breasted Grosbeaks

at the feeders near the cabin, the enormous

black and white Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus

pileatus) with its blood-red crest, up near the

cliffs at Luskville. I can tell you where, and

who was with me, down a great-list of the birds

I believed forgotten. My daughters learn birds

by numbers, matching a numbered body with a

name on a list, given in three languages, as if

that will make them real. The fact is, my girls

enjoy this. They call them doll-birds. And the

bird names are repeated solemnly, as if each

name were part of a spell. And I do it too.

For who can say this is not reverence, a litany,

a prayer, a wish for something promised. The

name of one woman who died finds its way to

the list, and I remember my first sighting of a

            rare old man I loved.

III. The Sparrow Drawer

It is time for us to be leaving; somehow we find

ourselves before one final display. It is the same

forest, rearranged by seasons, and including

the ducks, herons, owls, and hawks, that are

familiar to The Forest, as they call the example of

hardwood forest that is local, and ours. And then,

beneath the glass cases, my eldest daughter finds

two drawers. Above them a simple label reads:

Would you like to know more about birds? How

many times did I bring that other child to this

place? We never found these boxes. And they

are not hidden, merely unexpected. The first

lights up as we pull it out. Eggs. Large and

small. Blue, green, mottled beige, brown. Great

white goose eggs, the hummingbird's egg glowing,

a white pearl, all in rows, labeled, an old child's collection.

And the second drawer opens quietly, and as easily

as the first, lights up, displays its contents.

This is the sparrow drawer. No-one has gone to any

trouble to make this look pretty. Dead sparrows

lie in an uneven row, their bodies in disarray,

frozen on snow, which is also synthetic batting,

with black plastic arrowheads stuck in strategic

areas to accentuate their differences. The caption

tells us: all sparrows look alike to the untrained

eye. They are difficult to tell apart in the field.

Chipping Sparrow. Savannah Sparrow. Lincoln's Sparrow.

Song Sparrow. Swamp Sparrow. And alone, beneath

the line of identical bodies, a Pine Siskin, just

to show us how even one species can be mistaken for

another. And what have I seen hovering in a field?

I could swear it was the child I have lost. Love

I have learned the hard way; how many hovering boys

in schoolyards look just like him. Of course, I don't

want to see this, or the dead birds, and I close

the drawer. But my girls will not leave it alone.

They open it. I close it. They cry. So, we open it

again. We say the names of the different sparrows.

I tell them that any creature, once named, cannot

be forgotten. This, I believe. You see, there are

no numbers there, only names. The Pine Siskin trembles

at the bottom of the drawer, as we roll it shut.

Source:

Brebner, D. 2005. The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems, ed. Stephanie Bolster. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal. 192 pp.

These Canada geese were mounted on the ceiling of the old bird exhibit, and surrounded by mirrors that made it look like there were a lot more than there really were. Prints of this picture are for sale on eBay.