Chatting at the Sky

It’s a beautiful Autumn day. It’s 9:14 AM and I have just finished a bowl of shredded wheat with a sliced-up banana. I put on my Mr. Rogers green cardigan sweater, freckled with moth holes and worn thin at the sleeves, and step outside into the chilly morning. The sky is blue, with only a few small clouds. I fill the bird feeder and feed the six Toulouse geese and the single remaining Pekin duck some scratch feed. They eat first, and after they finish, the gaggle of Canadian geese rush to the bowl and polish it off.

I stand and watch the commotion unfold. A thought intrudes and I look up and start chatting at the sky. I recall how, at one point, I begrudged the geese. I couldn’t see why I was buying grain to feed them. Of course, there was nothing I could do to stop them, although I tried various techniques to scare them away. One such futile attempt found me going so far as to buy a floating alligator head. Before I bought it, I called the company down in Florida.

“I live up north and we don’t have alligators in New Jersey. Are you sure the alligator head will keep the geese off the pond?”

“Yes, don’t worry, geese are genetically afraid of alligators.” The salesperson replied.

It arrived. I anchored it in the pond. Within days, the geese circled it with disdain. The head now hangs on the outside of the barn. It scares no one.

A few years earlier, before the alligator head, I took a more desperate hands-on approach. The geese had hatched goslings, and I wanted them gone. I decided to shoot at them with my BB Gun. It made no sense then and makes no sense now. I’m not a violent person and I didn’t want to harm them. I doubted that the BB’s would have any effect. I was driven to it by frustration.

Shooting from the shore, I fired a few BBs. They skimmed off the water or into the bank on the other side. The geese never noticed. Then, one hit a gosling in the neck. It tumbled into the water, unable to lift its head, and drowned. I dropped to the ground, paralyzed with shame and sadness. I watched the mother circle the body and then lead the rest of her brood into shelter under the trees. That tiny death haunts me still, a lesson sharper than any sermon. Since then, I’ve never aimed at another creature — not even the squirrels at the bird feeder. I had to learn to coexist with nature, not try to bend it to my will—an arrogance that could never satisfy.

That same futility — the belief that I could control the world, or at least my part of it — returned to me as I stood chatting at the sky. My friend, Frank, is dead. Alcoholism. Cirrhosis of the liver. He weighed less than ninety pounds at the end. I am sad, but more relieved his suffering is over. He was an alcoholic of the fatal kind. Even up to his last breath he wouldn’t admit it was the drinking that was killing him. It was other, yet undiagnosed physical issues and, given enough medical tests and a good doctor, they would find the cause of his ailment and a medical fix.

I will go to his memorial service as I have gone to so many. I won’t recognize any family members, and few will recognize me. I will listen to the eulogies, and they will praise him as a good fellow. A diligent worker. Good father. Faithful friend. It’s useful to subscribe to the old Latin Motto, ‘De mortuis nil nisi bonum’ — Of the dead say nothing but good.

But it isn’t good to lie. Especially to myself. It is possible and beneficial to hold each another accountable for how we live our lives. By doing so, we honor the truth of their life, not the delusions. In the same way I had to hold myself accountable for the gosling I killed, simply because I didn’t want it on my pond. Every day, I try to live consciously rather than live a life bent into postures by fear and self-deception. It’s not a sanctimonious self-righteousness. It’s a way to live I have discovered after countless detours of self-centeredness, denial, ego, lust, and other untold frailties. It’s a way to live informed by the death of a gosling.

I did talk to Frank when he was still lucid. I shared my experience. He thanked me. Said he understood. Said he was on the same journey. He grin-fucked me every time. I supposed there were times he was sincere, just as I was sincere with my BB gun. But when we are misguided, off the path and so far into the woods, how is it possible to hear, let alone heed another’s call, that there’s a way out?

I finish my chatting at the sky. The sky doesn’t talk back. I end the morning by taking a walk in the woods, making an earnest effort to notice where I am. I see the sunlight, the mushrooms, the leaves, the story-telling bench I built. I resist thinking about Frank and the painful way he chose to die. Yes, he chose his death, in some way, we all do. We march to our end with a view of how we hope to arrive. My hopeful vision is that I will die of a massive heart attack, ten or twelve years from now, walking among these friends, these trees. But my fear is that I will die a slow death in a nursing home, senile and recognizing my deplorable state in lucid moments. In any case, it’s largely out of my hands. I still have a hundred ideas and projects I hope to realize but there will always be unfinished business in my queue.

When my time does come, I would like the first spirit I meet to be that little gosling, and I hope that Frank will be the one to bring her to me, cradling her in his hands. Behind him will be an extraordinarily long line of people. My daughter will be in the lead, followed by my siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, friends, poets, and writers who have informed my life. It will take an eternity to get through that line of gratitude and forgiveness. Thank God I'll have the time.

But just for today, I chat at the sky, waiting for an answer that never comes, yet feels as close as the rustle of leaves overhead and the fleeting warmth of sunlight on my face.