When I came to live here first, it was the Blackbird and the Robin who came to keep me company – for three dark winters we ate our breakfast together, in silence, by the cold open back kitchen door, just me and the Blackbird and the Robin and Dreads, the old grey cat that stayed in the cottage when the old woman died. 

*

My father taught me how to name the birds. Before I ever went to school, I knew the names of thirty-three birds that came into our garden – I knew them by the colours of their feathers and their size and the type and shape of their beaks and what they would eat – from the feeders, from the bird table, off the ground. I knew how to identify each bird by the way that it flew, how it landed, and how it took off and the time of the year or the season when it would reappear and show itself. I could identify birds with my eyes closed, listening to their song, and by the shape of their feet in the snow or the mud. The birds were always my friends – I knew them by the size and shape of their nests, and how and where and with what they built them. I knew them by the colour and number of their eggs, and I knew how to sit real-close-in beside the bird on the eggs and never ever threaten them; never. 

And before I ever went to school I knew how to talk with the birds – heart to heart – without words spoken out loud, or with words whispered gently on the air between us: don’t worry little bird I won’t hurt you or your nest or your eggs or your hatchlings or nestlings or fledglings – not ever.

*

So, when I say we – the Blackbird the Robin and Dreads and me – ate our breakfast each morning in silence – I don’t mean we were not talking or listening together. 

*

When I came to live here first, the cottage hid in the shadows. The small, single pane windows were shaded by the thick, overgrown hedges of Holly and Laurel and Hawthorn and Himalayan Honeysuckle that I wanted to keep. I didn’t want to cut anything back, or down, and I didn’t want to plant anything in the small walled garden for at least a year – and not because I didn’t think I would be staying this time in this garden and house, because deep down this time I did know this small place would be home.

But I told myself and the birds and Dreads the reason I wouldn’t put spade or hand to the Earth was to see how the garden turned itself through four seasons. I said I wanted to respect the way the old woman had planted her garden to face the rising sun each morning and to welcome the setting sun at the end of the day ar chúl an tí. 

And I told myself, too, I didn’t want to put my hand or saw to the hedge; I said I wanted to respect the birds who lived here in their nests long before I ever blew in, but I knew that was only half the truth. The real-truth was – I didn’t want to be seen. I wanted to hide away in the shadows / in my shame. 

*

I never wanted to be a separated father. 

I didn’t fall in love or decide to try to have a child together just to end up separating – who does?

And I guess, looking back now, to be fair to your mother she wouldn’t have planned on separating either. 

*

My father still feeds the birds every morning at his back kitchen door. 

Our dad has taught each of his grandchildren in turn how to feed the birds in his garden by hand – all except one of his grandsons – my son. 

And I was the one who broke that family chain of connection. 

*

When we separated I was the one to leave, after years and years of sadness and hurt, of silence and not talking; after years of arguing and shouting, too. Years of each of us crying ourselves to sleep in different rooms in our house in the housing estate. 

Your mother kept the master bedroom with the en suite and the broken shower. I left her there. 

And I slept for years after on the mattress on the floor in the back box bedroom – how I often wondered if the neighbours knew or guessed by the number of bedroom lights turned on each night. 

*

We never really talked about the separation, except the details of how we might be able to afford it. 

Your mother never seemed to care at all that I was the one looking for somewhere new to live. Somewhere close enough to share the parenting of you, our son. Somewhere close enough so that you could live half the week with me, half the week with your mam and you could still stay going to the same school.  

We didn’t really talk about the car either – but since I didn’t drive, even though I was still paying for it, I guess we both just assumed she would keep it: driving you to and from school; bringing me for the shopping for both the houses; dropping us off at the weekends for your under-sixes rugby games with your friends.

*

The cottage was old, and tiny, and cold and dark but quaint in ways too – like a fairy tale, wrapped tight in a dark tangle of overgrown hedge and unkempt garden – and it was on the market for a long time, all through our separating; all through my searching. 

The beautiful, young, skinny, blonde estate agent who was driving me all around town looking at houses kept telling me that the cottage wasn’t worth viewing. She said it would not suit my growing needs.

So, I ended up leaving her estate agency –and I took up with an old, slow, grey-haired, heavy-set male estate agent who was happy to give me the keys to the cottage for a weekend and leave me alone, to get a feel for the place, as he said. 

*

What I loved most were the high ceilings, the deep windowsills, the single pane windows, the thick stone-cold walls, the open / empty fireplace, the crooked walls and door frames, the tiny rooms, the way the sunlight moved around the cottage all day long. The way the front door faced the morning’s rising sun. The way the small garden was planted and wrapped itself about the cottage – overgrown. The preservation order on the front. The single Christmas decoration left hanging in the kitchen window. The framed picture of the Sacred Heart, with a blown-out red bulb beneath it, still hanging up over the cooker. The single saucer with the blue and white pattern from a Japanese epic hand-painted on it, left thrown on the empty kitchen counter. The old stone water font for the birds in the garden and the stainless-steel bowl for the dry cat food left out by the back kitchen door – waiting. 

*

But what I could not bear to ever imagine: waking up without my son sleeping in the same house. 

And I could not bear falling asleep in a house without tucking you into bed in a room next door. 

*

But the truth is that searching for the house, trying to move out, working out bills and finances with the banks and the credit union was all just a backdrop to distract from the war of destruction we were raging on each other; your mother and me, and you in the crossfire, and both of us willing to use you as our weapon of threat.  

Maybe there is no good way to separate /

Nobody wins / 

No wait – that’s another lie / 

Your mother won / I lost / She kept you / She stole you / She tore you from me, and She turned your head against me / 

But I left – I remember that part now too / 

I left / 

I left. 

But I would never / ever / take a child away from a set of grandparents growing old and broken / heartbroken at the end of their days. 

*

The night your grandmother died (your mother’s mother) she visited me in a dream.

I was sitting in a field of golden wheat – beneath a wide-open sky, asking the stars for forgiveness, and when she passed she held me in her eyes and said, without speaking a word, I always knew it wasn’t all your fault. 

It was such a gentle kindness from a woman I had loved. 

*

But it was the Blackbird and the Robin and Dreads who brought me slowing back into myself.

In the early times, when I didn’t yet know how this ‘cat’ could shapeshift and walk through walls and closed windows and doors, I used to get up to let her out for her early morning pee. The pre-dawn air was always chill, silver-blue-slate-grey; sometimes it was wet or raining, sometimes freezing, sometimes just about to shine, and the tiles on the kitchen floor were always smooth and cold under my bare feet – grounding me deep into home. 

And I guess for a while I must have tried going back into bed for a bit – afraid of the day – but Dreads had her ways of making sure I couldn’t fall back into sleep. She’d scratch and meow at the back kitchen door, and then louder at the small bedroom window, calling me out from myself, and now I can’t remember exactly when, but I started to take my morning piss with her in the garden – with my back to the wind – acknowledging my gratitudes, and by the time we’d turned back into the kitchen for breakfast together the Robin and the Blackbird were there waiting for us. 

They were always the same two birds – and I know this because each of them had one white wing. They were not albino but leucistic, and when I researched the genesis of their white feathers I learned that the affected plumage lacks melanin pigment due to the cells responsible for melanin production being absent. I also read it could be caused by a genetic trait that has become dominant and has been passed down from generation to generation in a family of birds that have stayed loyal to a local habitat, and I remember how, at the time, that idea brought me great comfort. 

*

I’d light a candle on the old Oak table and sit there and watch it flicker and grow. 

I’d grind a fist of coffee in the old wooden hand grinder my brother gifted me years ago. 

I’d set the coffee pot on the top of the gas stove and wait there – listening to it slowly percolate. 

And soon after that we were talking together, the four of us. The three of them listening to me without passing any harsh judgement. 

And that’s how it started, slowly each day, barefoot together sitting at the kitchen table – me the Blackbird the Robin and Dreads. 

That’s how they came into my life and rescued me from myself – my three sin-eating power animal friends.

*

Back then, and for a long time afterwards, I thought the Robin might have been you – my son – and the Blackbird maybe your older (half) brother – (though we never used harsh words like half / or step / or merged / or blended when once we all lived happily together).     

And maybe they were both of you in their own ways – who knows the truth or reason in meanings like this? 

But what I did realise when they came to leave at last – three years later – my grief was not as bad as I’d expected or worried about. 

*

And years and years after that again – I came to slowly understand how the birds in the garden that come into our lives carrying messages from the Otherworld – come from the Gods and Goddesses of our futures as well as our past.

Fergus Hogan’s poetry has been published in The Irish Times New Irish Writing, Channel and The Waxed Lemon, among various journals and anthologies. In 2019 his chapbook Bittern Cry was published with Book Hub Publishing, while Crow Magic was commended in the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. His poem ‘Consent’ took first prize in Waterford’s inaugural spoken word and slam poetry competition in 2018.