Kingfisher

But [the hoopoe] tarried but a short while; and [when it came] it said: “I have encompassed [with my knowledge] something that thou hast never yet encompassed [with thine].

---Q:27:22

Birds are better than us human beings. At least they are not attached to any one place, at least they have the freedom to go wherever they want...one day I will fly from here...

--Swami.

Welcome! goshawk slim, ghazi-eyed

How long fury, digging in your heels?

Make love’s writ eternal

Jess of your talon

never loose the scroll’s bond

Swap intellect for a heart

that you may know as One – eternity unending, unbegun

Steadfast, shatter nature’s mew

Nest in the cave of unity

Once there, yours the bough,

the Lord of the world your friend

Welcome nightingale in love’s bower

Cry ever love’s pain and fire

Sing soft heart’s psalms

that the heartless lose their ghosts

Throat like David’s, spirit wise,

the harmony of your kind a guide

How long will you dress lust in mail?

Fire the iron like David, make it tear

Once so soft will your love burn bright.

---Attar's Conference of the Birds

Those who are of an evolutionist persuasion are wont to look at things exclusively from an angle of material continuity. But what else is there but matter they say! And yet, we are reminded that they belong to "communities" like us. And how is it possible that a bird could have, in some respects, more knowledge than a Prophet? This is beyond the understanding of the moderns....

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves--goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.

----G.M.Hopkins

The roaring alongside he takes for granted,

and that every so often the world is bound to shake.

He runs, he runs to the south, finical, awkward,

in a state of controlled panic, a student of Blake.

The beach hisses like fat. On his left, a sheet

of interrupting water comes and goes

and glazes over his dark and brittle feet.

He runs, he runs straight through it, watching his toes.

--Watching, rather, the spaces of sand between them

where (no detail too small) the Atlantic drains

rapidly backwards and downwards. As he runs,

he stares at the dragging grains.

The world is a mist. And then the world is

minute and vast and clear. The tide

is higher or lower. He couldn't tell you which.

His beak is focussed; he is preoccupied,

looking for something, something, something.

Poor bird, he is obsessed!

The millions of grains are black, white, tan, and gray

mixed with quartz grains, rose and amethyst.

---Elizabeth Bishop, 'Sandpiper'