Yes, I realise that this sounds like the opening line clipped from some back-page obituary, a precursor to the details of a tragic loss. Nothing, however, could be further from my thoughts. There is nothing tragic here, and certainly no loss.
It is oft-quoted that death and life are not polar opposites but two ends of the same continuum: contemplating one surely equips us with at least a blueprint to consider the other. So, I borrow from the language of death simply because its usually sudden and unexpected nature is, quite simply, the closest thing I can think of to capture the essence of your unanticipated living presence bursting into my day, starling, surpassing simple binary understandings of positive and negative.
These thoughts are not mine alone. Looking at you now, starling, I am reminded of Keats’s encounter with his nightingale:
‘Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown.’
In that moment of meeting there is so much life and vivacity in the face of death and decline. In just one instant, the lovely song of this solitary bird spans generations, defeats the slow, marching decay of the years and lifts the veil to lay open to its observer the senescent nature of all things destined to fail and die, aside from Keats’ one enduring vision of longevity – artistic beauty.
Keats found his avian visitor ‘immortal’, but I have no idea how to even begin to adequately describe you, starling. Neve…no, that’s not it. Une…no, that’s not the right word either. For such a complex concept, there are occasions when words fall so short of being able to do the things we need them to. Timeless? Perhaps that’s what I’m searching for. It’s the closest I have for now so yes, let’s go with the idea that you are timeless. In fact, considering your name now, that word becomes more and more appropriate.
The name “starling” is derived from the old English word stærling, made up of the root steorra, meaning star and the suffix ‘-ling’, meaning either concerned with, or linked to, something else, for example a hireling or an underling, or to present a smaller version of something, such as a princeling, a duckling or a stripling. Whilst it is always difficult to fully trace the origins of any name, it is not difficult to imagine some ancient villager standing rapt beneath the sighing wave of a murmuration swashing through the air overhead, and seeing the silhouettes of your ancestors, their short and pointed wings giving them a silhouette like a vast band of shooting stars.
Whatever the true origins of your name, little star, it does not really matter, for it is entirely appropriate. You are absolutely a part of something far deeper and wide ranging than terrestrial concerns. I watch you from the street below, on your rooftop perch atop that simple terraced house in the middle of this grey steel town. To see you here in this humdrum location might be expected to underwhelm, but it is exactly because of this setting that you stand out so, simply pulsing into my day like a living verb. When you turn and flex, the petrol-on-water shimmer of your feathers sparks into life the aurora borealis across your breast, its play of light mirroring the sheen of your movements. Between and around the shine of this feathery spectrum, scattered starlight shimmers in the white tips of your plumage, and behind it all is that same depth of blackness that inhabits the space between constellations, the dark matter of you.
To see birds around here is no more unusual than anywhere else and, for a fairly urban setting, we see our fair share, each member of this avian cast bringing their own voice to the conversation. Being so close to the coast, the gulls are ever-present, their greedy skrikes and interrogatory strutting a daily encounter along with the creak of the crows and their Gothic cawing. The magpies kick-kick-kick off at the first sign of something they don’t like, sparrows chip-chip away at any leftover silence and, each day, the same blackbird stands atop the telegraph pole at the end of our street, sprinkling the tinkling notes of his song over everything. Buzzards are regular visitors from the nearby hills, prescribing their slow circles again and again and, once, we even had a sparrowhawk visit the garden, the shed roof angled in its talons like he wingspan of some massive, downed pigeon.
But they cannot compare with you, starling. Somehow, through them all, you cut a swathe every time you open your beak. Through all their petty squabbles, through the prejudices of the crows mobbing those buzzards, through the trilling and the routine sing-song mornings, the otherness of your voice carries itself on a clear path composed of all the chirps and clicks of some alien, indecipherable message sent from the great void of a distant elsewhere. Listening to you, I know that all these sounds carry meaning and drive and intent, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to unpick it. Never have I felt so far from a creature and have it feel so remote from me; never have I been so unable to comprehend. Never have I been left to feel so inadequate, so…human.
