Billie Hinton
Chipping Sparrows Tell Tales of Joy and Sorrow
Each spring, when the March winds blow hard across the farm, she finds the nests of chipping sparrows, small birds who weave tiny baskets from the tail hairs of her horses. The black mare who has passed away, her big bay gelding who is old but sound. The chestnut gelding her son rode, then her daughter, and her daughter’s painted pony. Their red and white strands blend with the blacks to create the look of plaid.
She collects the tiny nests for the nature shelves in her dining room, each revealing that year’s preference among the birds, sometimes mostly white, other years the plaid, a few years red prevailed.
This day she cradles the nest she’s found this cold windy morning, a reminder that spring came last year and will come again. The barn will smell like newly cut hay stacked in bales. Some years they get ice and snow, sometimes the winters slide into spring on muddy feet.
She places the nest in the tack room and stares at it, remembers the first year here, the first chipping sparrow nest. Her wonder when she realized what it was made of, each woven strand carefully selected by its builder. She has never seen a chipping sparrow but she hears their staccato songs. Imagines them spying the tail hairs, arrowing down to grasp them, then flying high, the long strand wafting behind.
This day she has fed the horses, bay and chestnut, and the pony, along with two miniature donkeys whose tail hairs seem never to appear in these little woven treasures.
The barn aisle has dappled sunlight dancing, the wind has died down, temperature warmed by the sun. She hears the sound of the chipping sparrow suddenly, what is it saying? She walks out, looks up into the big oak, to the branch she thinks its song is coming from. She does not see the bird but hears it again, and as it sings she feels them, wing buds sprouting from her shoulder blades. They make a rustling sound when she moves them, learning their weight and range of motion.
This day, she thinks, and the chipping sparrow speaks to her again. The old mare, the very coarse black strands, gone for years but buried by the arena and still revered and spoken to. The day she left. The sparrow’s song is mournful, then joyful. The woman looks up to the sky.
The black mare gallops there, shimmering in the sunlight, the way she used to do when she grazed in the pastures. The woman’s wings lift, perhaps the black mare did it, well, of course, she must have done it, but no matter, what happens next is that the woman flies, past the chipping sparrow on the branch, past the top of the old oak, up and up and up until her legs slip around the black mare’s barrel, and off they go, on a ride she never knew was possible. It hadn’t been, until this day.
Billie Hinton’s work has appeared in Literary Mama, Not One Of Us, Manifest-Station, Riverfeet Press Anthology 1 and 3, Streetlight Magazine and Anthology, Longridge Review, Minerva Rising, failbetter, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, On The Run Lit, Citron Review, The Hopper (Pushcart nomination this year) and Does It Have Pockets. She lives on a small farm with horses and donkeys, cats, Corgis, bees, native plants, and a Golden Retriever who believes in love.
