While cleaning the pond pump last evening of the steam of gunk the fish stir up in their spawning, I came upon a dying bird, iridescent flies invading his injuries.  The small bird made no move. He sat still upon the stone step, head high, beak up.   Only the flies moved.  Picking him up and lifting his wing I brushed the flies off and away then secured him between my two hands, protecting his wounds from the flies’ intrusion.

He seemed frightened, breathing fast, feet clamping tight then loose, tight then loose in a pace, his chest thumping against my closed fingers.  Likely all of it a response to the intensity of his experience and his injuries which did not appear severe, but internally must have been.  There were clean puncture wounds.  I held him and spoke softly, quietly, “it’s okay, it’s okay, I will stay with you, keep them away.”  Though my first words were, “I’m sorry.”

How miserable to be marauded, pried and probed by flies feverishly crawling on and in you wherever they can make ingress.  Working at your decomposition while you yet remain aware.  How many have suffered so?  How many have known that feeling, even watched it as they felt it?  It is hard to think it but, perhaps at some point the body finds solace in it.  An acceptance of its own decay and place in that inevitable process.  A rememberance.

He calmed as I held on and walked him to the shade where the evening’s breeze passed his face and tail, the all of him that was exposed to its caress.   Such beauty in feather shades of gray and long, yellow-white beak.  I lay him over on his back in one palm to examine him thinking maybe he could heal.  But his resigned manner told me this would not be so.  I rolled him to my other hand and spread each wing with slow, gentle deliberation, letting him feel them open to the air passing through and quietly close again.  I told him how beautiful he was.  My hands with globs of pond muck swaddled him.  If he noticed the muck he made no move of minding.

I thought of suffering and its place in the cycles of things and my place with it; the comforts in ending it quickly.  I had been at this place before; this one no different than the others for I could not break his neck out of fear I would not do it right and only increase his pain.  He had no choice but to trust me.  His eyes dark bright orbs that watched.  The idea of laying him in a soft clump of grass and letting my foot dispatch the pain visited me, the vision of it even.  Yet again I could not.  Nor could I simply let him lie alone in his waiting but for the feeding of the flies.

I held him and spoke quietly, gently.  I closed my eyes and centered in my heart sending its pulse out to him and in to me. We walked about.  After a bit his eyes would slowly slide toward shutting and I felt the first whisper of relief.  But a sudden sound would rip them open in what seemed a panicked alertness.  We continued our wait.

My mind turned about how long this part of his path may be and on ways to give him shelter unbothered by the pests wanting him.  I found a bucket, and with one hand padded the bottom with straw, and gathered a towel to close off the top.  All this done the thought of his laying there alone, deep in the bucket, with only its white sides to see, stopped me from placing him within it.  Thus, he never left my hand, instead remaining cradled there between the two, hiding his injuries and giving his feet secure perch, his body, support.

As my mind finally settled away from problem solving and purpose they came.  The final throes of a body’s last efforts.  I loosened my hold to allow them space in his wings, his feet.  His beak opened and closed once and twice.  In a hushed comforting I gave him my voice, a single thread to follow with the wind in the trees above us.  His head jerked a few hard times and his neck released.  Not the full falling forward or to one side I had expected, just an end to feeling the effort of its being held up.  His eyes were wide open.  I was not sure if his final beats were finished.  I waited.

At last I walked him back to the wild grapevines that clamber and shield a pile of old brush.  Parting its large, soft leaves I found a resting spot and left him there with the words I always say in the face of death, “Go with God”.  As if we could not.