MUTE MESSENGER

On a perfectly normal morning, with sun filtering through its leaves, the tree spoke:

“I sent you an oriole. It's on the way.”

We've read about magical reality, and sometimes it's literally true. When chopping carrots and celery, images from dreams come back, unexpectedly. Old dreams from years past, presumably forgotten, reappear in full flower with all the original colors, and the brief feelings asking as many questions as those answered.

There it is again, that industrial coven of dark buildings, shrouded shadows and the pale green sky with its escalated aurora that had chased violet or purple. The hulking silence. And just in the grain of it, discernible frames and panels with a lack of details where windows possibly had been. A lack of activity that brooded on sullen procedures.

As an example, for the discerning reader demanding proof.

And sure enough, the oriole appeared. Diving down over our neighbor's roof and heading straight for me. How beautiful and strange, the first one ever seen here. It landed on the opposite chair and flashed a bright yellow vest.

“Hello bird! -- Come for a visit?”

To which I received a stern glance from a fixed eye, and off it flew without answering.

This might be acceptable as a pleasant fiction. Perhaps a metaphor, or a comment on the dream life expected to be later woven in. It is neither. But if, in some rubble of persistence, it is to be understood as a straightforward fact, well then, call the fire department and try to humor me.

I do insist. The aura of reality, as in chopping carrots and celery, is easily rent. Magical reality, if worn as a disguise, would keep the straight jacket at bay. And to boot, the ruse might be exploited to generate sales tax. But the oriole actually did appear.

And now I sense a grudging shift of weight in chairs. Well, yes. Perhaps. Dreams do happen, if not always requested or understood. They actually do appear, in a sense.

In my backyard, trees talk. Hearing them depends on a magical dispensation of belief, akin to the suspension of disbelief widely granted for metaphorical discourse. But if one were to invoke this privilege in 'real life' communications, one would be crazy.

I relish the charge, given the prevailing states of belief called 'sanity.' A ball bearing on the scales of justice. And whilst most people are distracted with everyday fictions, the steel ball escapes, hear it? bouncing down long corridors at the Hall of Justice. I'm not the only one laughing.

Maybe the oriole will not return. All the more striking. A waking dream in real feathers, my magical reality. A lack of do-see-do, where skirts spread out in graceful fiction, leaves the focus of reality all too evident.

This planet is not fictional. The fact of not being apart from it is real. Beyond these mere words are living trees, mountains, fish and people, to sketch a trifle of the possible catalog. Whatever can be imagined for the list of life is insufficient for its details. All the great poets are insufficient. We are the keepers of the planet, it's fishes and streams. We are kept by them. The whole of us with earth and all the other forms of life and evolution is not something that happens to or is caused by anyone else.

And now the yellow vested oriole has spoken.