Hope it's okay that I'm posting a poem. I guess I'll hear if it's not okay.
This was just posted on a list serve from The Orion Society where we've been
discussing science, and I love it.

The poster prefaced the poem by saying: "Loren Eisley, in his book of poetry,
"Notes of an Alchemist," wrote the following, which fits this whole
science-testability discussion perfectly!!!"

MAGIC

Magic, an anthropologist once said
simply was from the beginning.
It was never
created or invented.
It travels across time
because of the treacherous imponderables
like death
with which man has to cope.
Malinowski wrote of man and of human concerns
and evasions, but I
have remembered that magic
was said to be from the beginning,
the beginning left undefined.

I have lived much among animals
in a small way,
bartering food for information,
trying to discern
whether the bright flame in the mind of man
is at all matched in fur or feather, for I
love forms beyond my own
and regret the borders between us.

We always feed our cardinal family at the kitchen window.
It took them a long time to understand this
and to come
regularly
but now
more than one generation
has lived here and they know
the entire ritual -
the window lifted,
the placing of seeds
the withdrawal of hands, the window closed,
the prudent wait before coming.
Even the wild ones will approach doubtfully
following their mates' example.
Not magic perhaps, but a kind of
unspoken learning.
Still
they have problems like man.
Squirrels come,
pigeons interfere,
and the cardinals
are withdrawn solitary aristocrats.
They do not like to eat
squabbling
at table.

Like any old emigre
I try to help them but time defeats me
with a hundred sparrows.
Yesterday moving about my den I discovered
the pair of cardinals
sitting on a window ledge where sunflower seed
never grows
and the window
is far from the source of food
and never opened.
It was evident
they had detected movement inside
and perhaps the strange giving animal
could be persuaded to change his habits if they perched there.
I did what I could.
I went back to the kitchen. I performed the ritual
and they came in the old way.

Like man they
have problems;
like man, what works
may work again

That is the root of magic
and science,
life's response to
uncertainties.

If a thing works
you try it
and try once more
and again
until
you are absolutely sure
it will never work,
then try it once more.
That is magic
and animals and people
live or die
by the uncertainties.

I shall never forget the first redbird
to come to our house.
Birds differ like men
and he was very different
and very beautiful.

In the mroning -
and it worked because I am a dawn riser -
he would fly back and forth along the whole
tier of windows
crying his morning song
telegraphing in quick clicks his hunger
until I fed him.
He was, I think, practicing vocal magic
that mosly worked.
He was
the most brilliant cardinal that ever came to us
the most responsive.
Somewhere in a few weeks he met with an accident
and the nest was deserted.

Magic runs to the beginning of life because
life is a gift and uncertain.
Both I and a bird practiced magic and were
beginning to pass a mutual threshold.
In the mornings now I remember.
I feed the birds
but nothing like him
ever came again.
I was the sorcerer's apprentice for a little while. I am powerless
without him.
I learned from him also how little magic can do
to stave off death
but this does not seem
the whole lesson.
I continue to feed the birds. I wait for another
friendly magician.
He convinced me
we were on the same path.

Even if no one comes
I am glad
that he made his magic work for a little while.
This is something
not given to many of us.
I miss him.
He made me happy
and is that not a kind of magic?

It is years now
but I
still lie awake and listen
in the mornings.
How does a man say to his fellows
He has been enchanted
by a bird?

from Didi Anstett
mailto: didianstet at aol.com
Seattle