I’ve never heard a mockingbird,
a New World multilingual,
and I’ve never seen one fly.
But I have climbed inside
numberless books, read
numberless words, breathed
numberless characters’ lives,
walked around in their skin
and thought their thoughts.
Characters are the only kind
of folk I ever felt comfortable
with, willingly lent my reader’s
ear, ever hopeful to hear
the echo of a mockingbird.
Kim M. Russell, 28th April 2020
My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads NaPoWriMo Day 28 Play it Again in April 2020: Harper Lee
On Sunday, April 28, 2013, Kerry asked us to take Harper Lee as our source of inspiration and, with no further instructions or restrictions, to focus our writing on a theme, quote, character or personal experience related to To Kill a Mockingbird.
I’m merging this prompt with Kerry’s Skylover Wordlist, sourced from Dylan Thomas’s poetry collection Deaths and Entrances, from which the twenty-eighth word is ‘numberless’.
writing in north norfolk 
Ha, again I could echo nearly everything you say. We don’t have mockingbirds in Australia either; and I’ve always been a bookworm.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s a long time since I last read Mockingbird, but I did see the play in Norwich some years ago, which was excellent. But I will always think of Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reading can take you to so many worlds.
As for mockingbirds, they are quite marvelous. This time of year they will sometimes sing for hours, a variety of calls one after the other.
LikeLiked by 2 people
So true, Merril. Sadl;y, I can only listen to virtual mockingbirds.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I tried to make a video for you today. I was out walking, and a mockingbird was at the top of a pole doing all sorts of other birds’ calls, but when I started to record, it flew away. 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for thinking about me, Merril! ❤
LikeLiked by 1 person
Numberless indeed! And what else teaches a person to climb into another’s skin than the study and enjoyment of literature?
LikeLiked by 1 person
I can’t imagine life without it.
LikeLike
“Characters are the only kind of folk I ever felt comfortable with,”.. sigh.. I so relate to this one, Kim! 💝 Gorgeously rendered 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you so much, Sanaa! :))
LikeLike
Love this❣️I, too, have never seen a mockingbird, and the characters in my favourite books feel as friends to me👍🌹🙏
LikeLiked by 1 person
I always hear mockingbirds where I live here in Texas. To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite books, and Gregory Peck will always be the only Atticus for me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve heard mocking birds are better imitators than parrots.
LikeLike
Read to know. Our momma mocking bird has a problem. Two of her eggs hatched over a week ago but the rest must be infertile, she won’t leave her nest. Similar to the feeling of the still born’s mother I would guess.
..
LikeLiked by 1 person
How wonderful to have a mocking bird’s nest in your garden, Jim.
LikeLike
Isn’t there a saying….if you are a reader, you will never have a boring day in your life. I do think that’s true. Like you, I enjoy getting into the skin of some of the characters I’m reading about….some evenings I just can’t put the book down. A “real page turner” to me means the characters are alive in my head! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Do you fall in love with and detest characters too?
LikeLike
The way Americans feel when reading about nightingales.
Mockingbirds really do seem to “mock” at times–to choose their imitations to get an audience reaction, anyway. I knew one who would be up in a tree imitating other birds when I’d come out, and then, seeing a human, do his human imitation saying “Hey, cutie! Tweety-bird!” I once saw another one, at the end of a cicada season, alight on a rail beside other birds and make a noise like a cicada just to see who would look around hungrily. And my mother used to have a patient who had learned to use a cell phone; the phone became the dotty old lady’s favorite toy, but she was always forgetting where she’d laid it down, and her resident mockingbird would perch outside the window and imitate her phone, then watch her get up and look for it. This gave her regular exercise and increased her chance of taking a call when a call really came in, so nobody blamed the bird!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Amazing birds!
LikeLike
[like] (WP won’t let me just “like” to indicate that a message was received, because the site through which I had a WP account is long gone)
LikeLike