Bird perspective

We often have disagreements on whether to let nature take its course.  I think the question is like asking Where to step in the flowing stream?  Where is it proper to intervene?  Where to watch?  Where do we let the hawk roost? 

The lady in red

Is back feeding the ducks.

It snowed.

The ducks know

She is faithful.

We have a flock of sparrows

A few juncos

A pair of cardinals

Two squirrels.

They find the seed scattered

In our backyard,

In spots reasonably safe

From the hawk.

The hawk has taken

To sitting quietly on the fence.

My beloved shoos him away

Regularly.

He is just being a hawk

I say.

These are our birds

He says.

Garlic soup

Today was a day with other plans.  Then I woke up to thunder and no electricity.  My computer had five minutes left of power in its battery.  I sneaked a yogurt out of the refrigerator.  The back yard was still.  So was I.  I contemplated garlic soup.  I am still contemplating garlic soup and the power has been on for four hours now.

This week brought

Tomatoes red and yellow,

A stapled brown bag

Of garlic.

I contemplate

Garlic soup.

Today is a day

For contemplation.

Once I assemble

The necessary ingredients

Tomorrow may bring

Execution.

Meanwhile a Cooper’s hawk

Stations himself

In the crab apple.

A squirrel sits frozen

On the fence.

A rabbit crouches motionless

Under a bush.

Today is a day

To be still.

Tomorrow may be different.

Birds as punctuation: a beginning

Today is birding with three other great grandchildren of Thomas Sadler Roberts, with the author of the book about him leading the pack of us.  We are not going until 11 AM.  Hardly a time for any serious birder.  But we, the great-grands, are not serious birders.  We will tromp through the bird sanctuary, then on to Lakewood Cemetery to locate the Roberts plot.  It is snowing.  I did not bring my boots.  

I always suspected

More than birds

Ran through my veins.

Despite my particular

Great-grandfather

I suspected

More than birds.

Still

Birds continue to serve

As punctuation for me.

Hawks place parentheses

In the sky

Where God is living

Or wait in trees

Still as anything.

Great blue herons stand still

As reeds,

Fish swim

In circle eights

Around their legs.

At least I imagine they do.

The herons stand still

As exclamation points

The mark the places

I need to be still

Myself.

Ducks of any variety

Are commas

Plentiful

They extend the conversation

On and on and on.

Branch

I am getting ready for day two of Domestic Violence Training.  I contemplate the creatures who share one particular branch of the ash tree in back.

This morning

The squirrel sits

On the hawk*s favorite branch.

I wonder if he knows.

I wish I were small enough,

Agile enough

To sit on that particular branch,

Fluff my tail,

Like the squirrel,

Eat breakfast,

Like the hawk,

Fifteen feet in the air

Balanced

On a branch.

Whim

The only thing I had scheduled for today was cancelled... so I went grocery shopping and, on a whim, decided to get a flu shot.  I get one every other year or two it seems.  Then I came home and watched a sharp shinned hawk eat a mid-afternoon snack as he sat on a tree branch right outside the dining room window.  I think it was a sharp shinned hawk anyway... couldn*t see his knees much less his shins.  Every day that is graced with a hawk sighting counts as good.

I got the flu shot today

On a whim.

It was available

At the pharmacy

Next to the milk cooler

In the grocery store.

In the little inoculation room

There was a list

Of possible inoculations.

I perused the list just like

I consider all the yogurt

In the yogurt aisle.

I always choose Yoplait Light,

The fruity kind.

My beloved chooses

Dannon Coffee.

I considered my choices but still

I had already paid

For the flu shot.

I chose the flu shot

On a whim but still

I remember the ad

I read yesterday.

It said the pharmacy

Was my best bet

For an unspoiled inoculation.

When it appeared right there

Next to the milk

Two aisles over from the yogurt

I figured

Why not?

Indeed why not?