I pick up Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 every five years or so. There is something new to be found with every reading. I wrote the author once to let him know there is one more person on the planet who deeply values his unusual war novel.

The book centers around the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII. Actually, it doesn’t center around anything, but Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Dresden at the time of the bombing, and the book is permeated by his experience.

He doesn’t harp on what happened, or make judgments. He delivers one observation after another through the eyes of his dazed, time-warped main character, Billy Pilgrim. Like a tiny Greek Chorus, a bird comments on the unexplained, perhaps inexplicable, human activity.

At least once during the war, Vonnegut himself must have heard a bird singing from within the surreal events around him.

Beautiful Kurt Vonnegut died last month. I couldn’t help but wonder if the happy bird I heard every morning during my travel regardless of where I landed wasn’t the same bird who followed his character Billy. I was told the bird I heard is a gorge rouge, or red throat. It has an elaborate, cheerful way of speaking, always ending with a question. I’m quoting from memory here, but I believe Vonnegut’s bird asked: Po-te-weet?