Equal measure

Each day is another lesson in patience and calm, worry and absurdity, in equal measure throughout the day. Taken with a heavy, heavy acknowledgement that we are okay. We are not sick. We are not without a home, or worrying that we could lose our home. We have food. We have money for food. We have healthcare. We have each other and we laugh together – perhaps, at times, about things we shouldn’t laugh over. And yet, living will slam you down but, that is not for this forum.

This morning we woke up to snow, just a tiny dusting that lasted a few hours and quickly melted away. But it brings the birds that for the most part don’t come to the feeders as long as there are fields to forage. The starlings were across the street behind my neighbor’s house doing ballet and dance on the power lines – the only power lines in the area near us as everything else if buried – but they were landing and rising, fluttering and skittering. There’s a small swale behind their house the birds were very busy. Yesterday they were in our front yard briefly but left quite quickly when a hawk cried.

 

Some blackbirds did arrive and made themselves at home around the feeders. Usually, the blackbirds cross the skies in long clouds of song. A snippet of a poem I wrote this spring says:  

As blackbirds pepper
the clouds – west to east mornings
east to west of an afternoon –
 
I pause to listen to the wave
of wings; their cries
soft bells against the leaden sky.

But this morning just a few showed up and were in no hurry to spend the morning foraging in the fresh fallen snow. They spent a lot of time sitting, like unwelcome guests, in the bare lilac bush. Poor things.

This afternoon, geese crossed over the yard while I was out, wings whispering in the dying light. A sliver of moon was nearly caught in the lonely pine’s arms and the cold was just turning from eye watering to bitter. Tonight will be clear, tomorrow sun will arrive and we will walk into a new day, rested and ready for every new gut punch.