Bird Shadow Dancing

staring out the car window

spit snow hardly a ripple

in the pond of thoughts

swirling to no particular

rhythm when suddenly
my eyes go all disco and

the focus fights to find

its locus as dancing spots

make their away this and

that around, across, on

the road’s paved face

and after the moment of

panic for a woman no longer

young wondering, worrying,

if this is what blindness

will be like, might be like,

floating, random, dancing

spots – and then she looks

up – briefly laughing at her

own foolishness, so ground-

bound – birds upon birds, 

flying, floating, swirling,

dancing on the wind of

their own imaginings, unmindful,

in the way of birds, of the 

fuss their presence creates for

the earth-bound ones below

Is This the Moment of My Undoing?

I am not a hypochondriac, but sometimes, I think like one and I wonder, is this the moment of my undoing, of my dying without knowing it?

This morning, two birds were pecking above my front door.  Whenever I put up a wreath on the front door, the birds make their nests there.  I got used to that for a time and when they were done, simply threw away the ruined wreath (trust me, you don’t really want to know everything that goes in to the making of a bird’s nest).  But I drew the line last year when they pecked and pooped their way through the mesh of the screen door, incorporating it into the nest.  No more wreaths for me.

This, then is the first post-wreath year.  And what do they do?  Apparently they make a nest on the slight ledge of the door frame.  So I open the door, they fly away and as I step outside, a little bird detritus floats down as I am inhaling and I am left wondering – did I just breathe in my own demise?  Will bird poop be what finally kills me?

Hmmm.  I’m going to have to add that one to my list of stupid ways to die (yes, I actually have such a list).

Sometimes I make me laugh out loud.  That’s usually the same time I’m scaring myself stupid.  Just like this morning.

In a World Where Giraffes Are Possible

Some years back, a whale swam up the Delaware River clear to Trenton [who swims to Trenton, New Jersey?] and every night became a whale watch . . .

In distant jungles are birds that sing with their wings and dance backwards – O delight!  Hand-clapping . . . laugh-out-loud . . . do-it-again-pleading delight –

I live in a world where giraffes are possible and rainbows are common place.

I am blessed.

Baby It's Cold Outside

The forsythia branches are bare of the little birds who inhabit them in winter.  I wonder where they go when it’s too cold even for them?  And why, when they’re wise enough to go to deep cover, I or anyone would do otherwise.

Imagine my fingers, literal and proverbial, being pried from the door jamb by my will, personified as a strong counter-force of some sort, as the one I refuses to go outside – it’s cold out there! – and the other insists, reminding me that but for church, I have been a house potato for a week and that pajama day might turn into pajama lifetime if I’m not mindful.

Will the car start?  I confess I do not know and am filled with mixed hopes – let it . . . don’t let it . . . and I don’t much care who wins . . . cos baby, it is cold outside!

With water lines no longer frozen and heat working, why would I want to go outside?  Life, it seems, demands it.

I’m off.  Wish luck – for me and the birds.

The Birds Insist

The birds insist I get up
and greet the new day
for they will give me
no rest – their symphony
erupting, as it does, into
the morning sub-conscious
strata of my oh-so-happy-
to-be-in-a-warm-bed mind

I jump up like a ninja
I’ve still got it!
and fall gracefully
back into the warmth

Sunday beckons and
I will get up – just
not yet, not now

but the birds insist

The Birds Are Singing Peace Today

There they are again – the winter birds perched so assuredly in my forsythia, singing loud, sharing the news of their day – at the top of their tiny lungs.

What I hear is the song of peace.  And it is not a quiet thing.  Quite the contrary: peace is a loud, cacophonous song, with lots of disharmonies.  It’s the sound of safety and joy and that word we Americans love to bandy about: freedom.

Maya Angelou may know why the caged bird sings, but I do not.  For sure I know that the cage changes the song and dampens it – sometimes to the point of invisible silence.

Freedom, I think, is only possible with peace.  We’ve gotten it so often backwards though, espousing this notion that war is the means of peace and that war is the gateway, at a bare minimum, to freedom.

But here’s the thing: in the US, as a mere example of history, we could have fought a revolution and still ended up with tyranny; many before and after have.  That we did not was not the product of war; it was the product of peace: rowdy, boisterous, competitive, shouting-for-attention, compromising, cajoling, negotiating, ultimately agreeing, peace – a peace that granted the space and the freedom to come to such agreement (at least for some – the rest of us would have to wait on the sidelines quite a while for our freedoms to come).

In the Civil Rights movement, all was not joy and light; but the wagers of that effort who were successful waged their efforts in peace.  They were loud; they insisted on being heard.  They sang their song to any and all who would listen and to many who would not.  They did the work – the painstaking, life-risking, long and arduous work – of bringing change to the many who saw no need for it.

And with each footstep, each effort, they got louder and louder and louder.

Peace is a loud thing.

War and tyranny are actually quiet things, coming as they do like the proverbial thief in the night to take away all sacred things, being planned as they are in the back rooms where the light of day seldom shines.  War and tyranny frighten us into silence – that place where we dare not speak lest we say the wrong thing and perish for it.

War is a quiet thing, loud only its exclamation point ending of things.

Peace is a loud thing, shouting the sheer pleasure of its own existence.

The birds are singing peace today.

The In-Between Silence

I love the in between silence
in the mornings when the birds
and the passing cars compete
to bring wakefulness into the
recesses of the time and space
I occupy – of course I like the
birds the best – nature’s alarm
clock is hard to beat . . .

but best of all I like the two-count
of the in-between – the silent
moment that stands alone
beckoning me into a new day
until another bird, another car
decides it’s been long enough
this silence of the in-betweenness
of things and the chorus begins
again

Morning Fancies

I.

There!
There he is
visible only from
the corner of my eye
Tiger, Tiger, burning bright
striding across the morning sky
hunched shoulders in pounce mode
sunlight and clouds creating the pattern
the menace of meaning whenever there is
a tiger stalking the sky – I am no Pi (pie?), sir,
and this is not my life – why are tigers always so . . . hungry?

II.

the crackle and creak
and wrangle and break
that is the sound of my body
in the morning
awakens the birds
I’ll be quieter tomorrow,
I whisper them as I arise

III.
I enjoy a warm cup of morning fog
with the start of my day
here in mountain retreat
where mist settles into
mountain’s belly
and offers itself up
with each new-day mantra –
drink me –

Waking Up

She's there again -- Ms. Goose -- honking her wake up message for all to hear.  And he's there too -- listening Bird, answering Bird, whistling a lovely pitch (what key is that?).

The fog hangs over the distant lake as the sun slowly moves across each droplet suspended in mid-air.

And for a moment, all is stillness.  Ms. Goose is drawing breath, Bird listens, and in the in-betweenness, a splash -- heard as clearly as if I were the one diving into the so-cold water -- travels across the distance from lake to me.

That sound -- that single quiet splash in the even quieter morning -- vivifies . . . everything.

I am alive.

And it is a good day.

Wake Up!

The first bird I hear -- not the first to speak, surely -- this morning, is a lone goose, honking persistently into the quiet of sun newly risen, fog quietly leaving,

Wake up!  

Get up!

It's time to get moving!

We have flying to do!

The answer he receives is not from his own kind.

Perhaps it is a crow -- but if so, she's feeling awfully sweet and tender this morning.  Or maybe it is a starling -- more full-voiced than she has ever been.

Whatever the bird, Goose honks and Bird answers and nothing is resolved.

Each then flies their own way, Goose trusting the other geese to follow, Bird neither knowing or caring, knowing only that the flock will be there in the trees when she retires tonight.

What a wonderful way to begin a day.

The Red-Winged Blackbird

“Sue, what’s the name of the bird that’s black with red on its wings?”

FlickrCommons Photo by dbaron

With little, if any, trace of irony in her voice, Sue replies “Why Beth, that’s the red-winged blackbird.”

I still laugh whenever I remember Sue, my 92-year-old congregant and friend, smilingly telling me about the bird I was looking at.  Sue is my go-to gal for all things floral and faunal in our corner of the world.  “What flower is this?”; “What is this leaf?”  “Is this poisonous?”  “Why is a horned owl called a horned owl?” . . . Sue has all the answers to my many questions about the natural world.

But the best day was the day of the obvious answer – the answer that, in my certitude at my own ignorance of such things, never occurred to me – the black bird with the red wings is just that.

Now I am here in Scotland and Sue is back home from a winter away with family.

I hope her days are filled with red-winged blackbirds, obvious questions with equally obvious answers and silly friends brave or foolish enough to ask.

Noticing the Wings that Fly

Sunday, I travel 6 miles to Headwaters Chapel for the first of two church services.  I park along the road, in front of the Varner family farm.  Sometimes the cows are lined up along the fence in hopeful greeting; what they think I bring, I cannot say, but whatever they’re hoping for, I disappoint, turning away from them and towards the chapel.

Last Sunday was a beautiful, cold, crisp, clear winter day.  The cows had long since given up hope on me, so there was no greeting, or so I thought.

As I turned from the car door to swing my robe on at the road’s edge, I felt more than heard or saw movement.

And then I heard it . . . the sound of hundreds of birds’ wings beating . . .

The flock lifted up on waves . . . staying low, it was almost as if they ran rather than flew across the road to the field further away from this mid-morning intruder.

A smaller group held back, waiting until all the others had landed on the other side before lifting up in identical fashion. . . the staggered crossing created a long ten-count of beating wings . . . the only sound in that moment in the whole of the valley . . .

As they resettled in the far field, I realized why I hadn’t seen them before . . . even though I knew they were there, even though I watched them fly in and land, as soon as they touched down, one by one and in groups of hundreds, they disappeared into the short grass.

The wing sound was my only real proof that they had been there.

I was sorry I had disturbed them even as I longed to hear their wing song again.

If they hadn’t moved, I would have never seen them.

Ears are for hearing and eyes for seeing, but hearts that soar and feet that dance and wings that fly are for noticing.