Four calling birds. What the hell is a calling bird?
From Alfred at Christmas, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
A woman on the bench by the hardware store sang the counting song to a child in a stroller, December, cold enough that her breath showed. She got to the fourth day and stopped, and the child waited, and she said it anyway and moved on to the geese. Four calling birds. What the hell is a calling bird? I have been calling since before sunrise most of my life and nobody has ever put me in a song for it. For years I assumed the old verses meant something exact and I simply had not been told; it took me a long while to consider that she did not know either and sang it fine.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Flew in for the pie, not the politics.
- Of course reindeer can fly. A bird taught them.
- Forget reindeer and give me a flock of geese crossing a silver moon.
- I have a flight plan, but no fight plan. It's a bird thing.
- It's Christmas. You bring the cookies. I'll bring the songs.
- Feed your flock. Leave a fruitcake in the backyard.