I stop in the entryway
stand on the bricks
wait for my mother
looking out the open front door
without seeing
and then I am watching
three house finch
on the garage roof
playing musical chairs
with the corner
but quiet
and I am breathing now
grateful they brought me back
and for their joy.
Back yard corner of my mother’s home, hot tea in hand, time just before my writing class to drink it, to soak up the small arm of these foothills that wraps itself around the cul-de-sac here. If I could be anywhere in the world I might choose to be beneath the down blankets in my Palm Springs bed, the San Jacintos spread before me, the white crowned sparrows making their quiet sounds beneath the bougainvillea in the corner of the courtyard and the sense that my mother was well and sleeping at home with her cat. But this corner is good, too, my pen moving across the page, the sun just high enough now in the southern sky to send shafts of light through the leafless branches of the liquid ambers. I sip my yerba maté and pray, a kind of almost-peace descending.
There is this little bird who comes to the corner of my mother’s back yard where I sit in the mornings when I can. Today she is poking around the pots of succulents looking for bugs, her white and gray and black and flashes of yellow vivid in the early sunlight. I watch her dart about, sip my yerba maté, warm cup cradled in both hands. I’ve only ever seen her by herself, and I wonder again today if she is all alone. I say metta for her. May you be safe and free from harm. May you have everything you need to thrive. May you be happy. May you have companionship if you want it. On the last wish, I can’t help thinking, oh, to me our companionship is dear. Later, I finally find her in my bird book, a yellow-rumped warbler. And, too, once I know what kind of bird she is, I see another of her species approach her. Scolding? Wanting sex? I haven’t seen her since, but I’m still hoping she’ll be back.
They are both still alive in the morning
one sprawled across the carpet in my room
in a patch of sun.
I know how lucky I am
because I was not loving
when I said good night
and if one of them had died
I’d have to carry that deep regret
all my days.
I walk back down the hallway
to my room
and there is Venus rising
big and bright above the ridge
the sky just now growing light.
Again, this unlooked for gift
sweet recompense
for interrupted sleep
echoes of the last day of our year
a triad now of blessings.
I am up for my mother
in the dark.
In between trips down the hall to her
I sit on the edge of my bed
wait to see if she settles again
and see the fat crescent moon rising
above the ridge
the whole rim of the moon lit up, too
my big silver lining
I would have been asleep
missed this magic.
It is light when I go back to bed
the moon a long, lovely sliver in the sky
penultimate day of her cycle
daylight thinnest sickle of her
a second blessing
this last morning of our year.
Dear Readers,
Those of you who have been with me here for a long time will know I often fall behind and catch up at the end of my year in order to meet my goal of writing one blog post for each year I’ve been alive.
This year has held extraordinary circumstances for us all, and I am indeed extraordinarily behind. I am trying to be kind to myself, to reach for ways to let life be a tiny bit easier. I don’t know if I can let myself “fail” in this. But I think I need to be open to the possibility since I would have to post 4 times each week in order to catch up.
So. I think I am writing to apologize to you for whichever way this falls out. I apologize in advance if I am not able to meet my goal and for going “missing” for much of ths year. (I had no idea I’d posted so few times!) And I apologize in advance in case I do make efforts to catch up, for the crazed flurry of posts I might inundate you with in the coming weeks.
I want to thank you, too, as always, for being my dear readers. However the rest of my sixty-third year unfolds, thank you. May life be as gentle with you as possible. And here’s to being together when I’m sixty-four. (Yes, there is a song in that!)
Love,
Riba
No Holds Barred 