The Wrens, This Present Epoch of American Nastiness, and a Unifying Theory of Everything

A reflection on the weariness of American politics and the commentary that goes with it.

The Flock (Madison County, 2024)

Thank you for reading. This piece is a subscribers-only piece, mostly because it touches on American politics. So, if you’d like to read this piece, consider subscribing. And if you join by May 31st, you’ll get 30% off forever!

---

It is May in the Ozarks, which means the sun is starting to find her heat. She's not taken off her full dress, hasn't yet blessed us with the majesty of her scorching hotness, but she's down to her skivvies. That means this: If a man wants to mow the lawn, he best do it before noon, or even better yet, just after his second cup of coffee.

This weekend—after my third cup of coffee but before noon—I cut grass on an oversized riding mower. It's one of those big-boy mowers made as much for comfort as for blazing paths through tall grass, and it offers the pleasant illusion that the work being done is no work at all. On that aggressive easy-chair, I cut walking paths down the middle of my back field, and there, I scared up a flock of doves. I kicked myself for not having a camera, considering that perhaps I could have carved out a new genre of the art form—ornothological mowing photography—a genre that no one needs. It would have been a worthy capture, though. This is the first flock of dove I've seen on the land, and I suppose it's because we've let the grass go to seed on the back three. All those tangled blades give the dove what they need: food, shelter, and cover from predators and lawnmowers alike.

Down the east side of the property, I saw an insectivore dart from a fence post down toward the tops of those same blades of grass, pinch something in its beak, and return to its perch. It was a brown bird with a longish tail, and something about it reminded me of a drab, short-beaked kingfisher. I stopped the mower and watched as the tiny bird folded, crushed, and swallowed a yellow butterfly. It looked at me. I looked at it. It whispered We aren't so different, you and I and then it flew back to a tree branch on the neighboring property. I didn't have the foggiest idea what his whispering meant.

It took me no small amount of time to identify that bird—a Carolina Wren, I think—and I cannot stop thinking about its sacramental aggression. In its hunger, it hunted the stuff that sustains, and when he found it, he took it and swallowed it whole. It churned the butterfly in its guts and through the churning, the butterfly became part of the wren. This is a sort of unified theory of everything: Everything goes on and on forever, even if—maybe especially when—consumed.

I wonder a lot about the simplicity of birds, particularly the simplicity of the hunting birds. At eighteen, I stood alone on a marsh boardwalk in southern Louisiana. Over the flat green marshlands of Sabine Pass, the white-chested hunter rode the winds between marsh and Gulf, scanning the waters for prey. Quarry spotted, the killer tucked his wings, dove, then extended his talons and speared some stupid skipjack that swam too close to the sun.

There are other hunting birds—the bald eagle of the White River, the red-tailed hawk of Madison County, the undersized wren of my backyard—and they perch on telephone wires, fence posts, and the limbs that reach the edges of the field. I wonder what it'd be like to live that way, always observing, always focused, always looking for the next thing to for the gut to churn. Maybe it'd be exhausting. Maybe it'd be exhilarating. Maybe it's just the way of birds and they don't give a tail-feather's worth of thoughts about it.

The Cardinal (Goshen 2024)

***

On Sunday afternoon,

John Blase

sent me a thinkpiece written by a well-meaning Christian author who bemoaned the ideological impurity of the Christian hard right. It was not the worst piece I've read on the topic, and the author—a bona fide scholar—had some valid points about this present epoch of American Nastiness. And it has gotten nasty. There are days whenI feel dirty living in this country, particularly when I consider the fact that an ex-president just wrapped a lawsuit where the three star witnesses were a porn star and two Goodfellas.