Nihtegale. Stranger and Friend.

You are what it is to be a song, and here I am to be a stranger, that identifies with you. They do not see although they do. some green perhaps, and your sweet air. They are looking at you now, and they are looking at me.

This is the portrait of a bird and the imagined stranger that tells of it at different times of the day. The imagination as a storytelling self makes this a portrait of the bird, the stranger, and also of me. This work is based on my readings related to avian aurality and lore in England from the 7th to the 10th century, with particular interest in Riddle 8 of the Exeter Book, which is seemingly the only surviving instance of the nightingale in Old English text.