I am on my way home, or to the place I call home these days, after sorting and dumping my recycling in the Village. Eyes on the road, left hand steering, right hand groping for … what? I don’t even remember now … I accidentally fire up the portable speaker that sits, mostly unused, in the small wooden crate on the floor between the seats that passes for my glove compartment. Booooo, boo-bee! Shockbox ready for pairing! the pleasant, modulated electronic voice announces. What the hell, I decide. I prefer silence nine times out of ten. Turns out this is time ten.
There’s no cell service here, so I open up my music app, a woeful trove of 70s funk, Bollywood hits, playlists from my conscious dance phase, and random singles. If you’re one of those people who chooses their online dates based on a person’s music, you’d scan my library and swipe left.
I press Play and immediately start bouncing in my seat to Chaiyya, Chaiyya. Next up, Adham Shaikh’s Shake It (Shaikh It), then Balkan Beat Box’s Adir Adirim and Hermetico in quick succession. It’s 2014 up in here and this ’98 GMC Safari is a’rockin’. When the electric opening chords of Bryan Adams’s Summer of ’69 ring anomalously through the van’s interior, I realize my entire library is playing itself in alphabetical order by artist. Which is why the song after that is Chris Rice’s Hallelujahs.
A purple sky to close the day
I wade the surf where dolphins play
A taste of salt, the dance of waves
And my soul wells up with hallelujahs.
A lightning flash, my pounding heart,
A breaching whale, a shooting star
Give testimony that you are
And my soul wells up with hallelujahs.
Oh praise now all these mighty works
There is no language where you can’t be heard
Your song goes out to all the Earth
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
I am singing along, harmonizing where I can. I know this song well. As only music can do, this piece sends me back to 2005 to a room where 200 or so people have gathered to celebrate their connection to the divine. I have come at the invitation of my gay friend Tom*, a former banker from the US turned channeler of medicinal herbology. The minister is a former go-go dancer and can still work the stage like a pro. And Leora Cashe is singing.
I learn later that she has changed Rice’s lyrics in places, from their overtly Christian tones—Oh praise Him, all His mighty works—to a language that includes us all. She is a jazz musician, her voice elastic and rich, and the beauty of this melody, these words, this instrument, brings me to tears.
I am singing …
O cratered moon and sparrow’s wings
Thunder’s boom and Saturn’s rings
Unveil the creator as we sing
And my soul wells up ...
… when I see the small body on the road.
Oh praise now all these mighty works
There is no language where you can’t be heard
I drive on, nowhere to turn or pull over, but in my mind I mark the spot. And I know I wouldn’t have seen it at all had it not been this song that was playing. These words moving my heart.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
I’m doing 50 in a 70 zone and there are two cars behind me now, impatient village workers in a hurry to get home to the valley. Finally I spot a turn-off and get out of the way. Turn around. Go back. Still singing …
The pulse of life within my wrist
A fallen snow, a rising mist,
There is no higher praise than this
And my soul wells up … oh my soul wells up
Yes my soul wells up with hallelujahs.
I pull to the side of the road just ahead of the body and put my flashers on, pause the music, grab a handful of tissues, check my side mirror. All clear.
She is broken, torn, partly flattened. Eye sockets popped. The blood is bright red, so this is recent, and the organs are still encased in their fascia, so the scavengers have not yet begun their work. Crows live here, and ravens, and both will eat carrion. Last week, a neighbour named the ravens in the death of two litters of piglets, 35 in all. Voracious omnivores. But they won’t get this one.
I glance up and down the road, the main through-way in this town but a sleepy byway by any standards. It’s rush hour, and no one has passed by in either direction since I stopped. Surely the driver could have braked, could have swerved …. But I have seen these little ones, every day now for the past several weeks, crossing the roads and even the highway just inches above the tarmac. Conserving energy, I suppose, so much to do, so many to feed. Flashing suddenly out of a ditch or the cover of a grassy bank and swooping to cross two lanes to the ditch or grass on the other side, mate or nestlings or some morsel of food drawing them riskward. And I have had my own narrow misses.
I bend, lift the small body, still warm, from the road and place it well off the concrete in a slight hollow partway down the bank. It seems too large to be that of a sparrow, but I could be wrong. It is impossible to tell now. There are tiny salmonberries ripening on thin stems near the ground, and I pick a bright red one and place it just below her beak. Draping a wild daisy across the still form, I pluck three large waxy leaves from their stems and cover bird and berry and flower. I say a prayer, commend her soul into unseen hands.
Back in the van, I ease on the road, looking once more for a place to turn around, hit the back arrow and play the song again.
Oh praise now all these mighty works
There is no language where you can’t be heard
Your song goes out to all the Earth
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujahs …
Oh hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujahs.
Badass... as ever.
Beautiful! Felt like I was right there with you. Hallelujah ❤️🩹 🐦