Two Ways of Looking at a Redbird Such is the constitution of all things, or such the plastic power of the human eye, that the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and of themselves…. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature The dab of vivid red is a grace note in the snowy landscape, a painting, a photograph waiting to be made. It is cardinalis cardinalis, its bold color a surprising result of evolution, one mutation after another, some that work out better than others and voila! the bright northern cardinal. The delightful fit between the cardinal and the lens, retina and brain pleases us so much because we evolved together. Our visual capabilities and aesthetic sense have been shaped by ten thousand generations of mutation and natural selection. Homo sapiens and cardinalis belong together. The dab of vivid red is a grace note in the snowy landscape, a painting, a photograph waiting to be made. The cardinal may be hidden from the hawk but we can hear his trills as he hops from branch to branch in our overgrown thicket on the shortest, darkest day when the weary year lies down to die, like a wise elephant who knows she has had enough of this life. Then in a flash he flares upward through the overcast sky with the color of the rising sun and the rainbow promise we still need to hear – the dark will not last forever.
James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts where he accompanies adults and adolescents recovering from disappointments and illusions. His poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Soundings East, Zetetic and other journals, and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. His collection, The Year I Learned the Backstroke, was published by Aldrich Press in 2014.