Learning to See
on optic nerves, chimney swifts, and squirrels
Your optic nerve's low bandwidth.
Barely any data going through.
I mean sure, it's a lot, but nowhere near enough
to account for all this vividness.
What’s the trick?
Your brain.
Makin’ shit up.
Filling the gaps.
Your optic nerve sends a lossy JPEG.
Your brain up-samples.
So when you finally pay more mind—
to, say, which angles oaks prefer,
or the shape and pattern of walnut leaves,
or the universe of gradations within “green”—
you see more.
With training,
with richer inventory,
brains fill finer gaps,
up-sample to higher fidelity.
It took till I was 20
to know the sound a squirrel makes.
I thought it was some kind of bird!
That short chirping squeak.
WRIHT. WRIHT. WRIHT.
Had been neighbors with these beings for,
what? My whole life?
Surely they lived in my hometown!
Though I recall nothing of them until college.
Where finally I spotted one,
head-down on a tree trunk,
hollering.
WRIHT. WRIHT. WRIHT.
At me?
At all us humans, milling about?
At some other squirrel, unseen?
Who can know the mind of squirrel!
It took till I was 37
to finally install the bird app.
What even ARE those chittering fast-flyers,
singing down the sun every night?
Are those… sparrows? Doing a high-flying sunset dance?
Is that what a robin looks like, far away?
No, they are swifts. Chimney swifts.
”The flying cigar,” with scythe-shaped wings.
I’ve never seen one up close,
because they never land.
At least not on the ground.
They roost in chimneys,
and spend all day zooming,
eating bugs.
And sure enough,
once I learned their call,
their shape, their name,
I started seeing them everywhere.
All day long.
A special burst of sunset exuberance, yes,
but all-day aerial acrobatics,
shimmering chittering raining down like confetti.
The swifts, sky-born party brigade,
and here I’d never noticed!
Never known.
Illiterate, uncurious, colonial,
spending almost four decades
deprived.
When my five-year-old asks
what kind of bug that is
what kind of dog that is
what kind of ______ that is
and I don’t know,
she says we need a ______ book.
We have a tree book,
and a bird book,
but we need so many more.
We need a bug book.
We need a dog book.
A book of color.
A book of stones.
We need a fish book.
We need a cloud book.
A book of tracks.
A book of bones.
There’s so much to know
but every step reveals overhead parties
and I’m ready.
I want to learn to hear.
I want to learn to see.