June 5
1. I just saw a bird take away a piece of plastic (for its nest?) and I felt guilty.
2. There was a rustle and a clatter and then I saw the bird struggle up with the piece of plastic and fly over the house.
3. The plastic was in the front garden where, if I had known about it, I would have thrown it away, or recycled it out of hope. The bird found it. It was a sparrow, though I’m not sure if that’s important. I don’t know enough about sparrows and their nest-building. In Indonesian there aren’t words for Sparrow or Hawk, or Heron, or Jay. There is only a generic, and I wonder how much that changes things, if it does. No one speaks Indonesian as their native language except Jakartans, and their Indonesian long ago jumped the rails and became incomprehensible to second-language speakers.
4. The Sparrow rattled it, which is what caught my attention, and then wrestled it into the air, its flight visibly weighted down by that composite, translucent gossamer. It’s trash so we don’t notice when it has beauty, its softness and drape as it shatters.
5. The bird wrestled the plastic out of the garden and flew away with it. I watched it from the porch and thought of the sea and its creatures full of plastic.
6. The plastic resisted only for the fraction of a second it takes to crackle. Then the bird flew away with the plastic in its beak.
7. The Sparrow stole it from my yard, my shabby sliver of dirt between the porch and the road and I thought – how dare you! Take that plastic.
Tiny Events 