The window is thick plate glass. It needed to be. The flicker hit with a bam like a baseball and dropped into the tall grass trembling dead. By the time I walked outside to see, the bird was still and limper than limp. I picked it up by its silver feet. The feathers that looked copper-colored in flight were beautiful translucent orange. For some reason I acted quickly, digging a hole in the garden to bury him in. Through the act of his dying he’d become one with the family, and I wanted him close by.
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John Hamilton Farr lives in Taos, New Mexico, U.S.A. with his classical pianist wife. As New York Times best-selling author James C. Moore tells it in a review of John’s first book, “Buffalo Lights is the work of a man attuned to the world who sees it differently than you and I and writes about it with a language and a vision of life that is impossible to ignore.” John is the author of BUFFALO LIGHTS, TAOS SOUL, ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE, and THE HELEN CHRONICLES. He has been publishing online since 1996 (Zoo Zone, Farr Site, MacFaust, GRACK!, FarrFeed) and blogs regularly here at JHFARR.COM. His latest endeavor is the aptly-named GODDAMN BUFFALO at Substack. See also → John’s Twitter profile, Amazon Author Page,
video channel at YouTube, and website photos at SmugMug. To email John, please see CONTACT INFO on About page.
judyinbostonOctober 19, 2015, 6:25 AM
I always feel bad when birds crash into the windows. We had a goldfinch go kamikaze this fall, and I buried him next to the flowering quince. Sometimes the birds glance off and don’t kill themselves. The flicker was beautiful. I’ve never seen one up close like that. Poor thing.
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I always feel bad when birds crash into the windows. We had a goldfinch go kamikaze this fall, and I buried him next to the flowering quince. Sometimes the birds glance off and don’t kill themselves. The flicker was beautiful. I’ve never seen one up close like that. Poor thing.