The heater cycles off, and in the welcome quiet I hear the crunch of my mother’s crackers and a house finch singing in Aida’s back yard. I savor the sounds and the absence of sounds and the bit of cool, fresh air from the sliding glass door I have not yet closed all the way. I hear the sound of my pen scratching across the page in my notebook. For this one suspended moment, all is right with my world, and I feel like a writer.
Three white-crowned sparrows and a California towhee eat bird seed beneath the small ficus tree in my mother’s back yard. A spotted towhee runs out from his hiding place beside the house to join them, and his animated small self, his bright reddish orange and sleek black, so fresh and alive, remind me of the empty place in the pot of succulents where the dead spotted towhee used to lie, and my belly, full of echoes, hollows out.
I can hear the trill of a bird, a familiar, much-loved sound, but if I once knew who was making it, I have forgotten. My mother gets up from her computer game to wrap the fuzzy orange tube scarf around her cat, protection from the sliding glass door I’ve opened ten inches, desperate for “real” air and a connection to the earth. “It’s okay,” she says to Trie. “It’s okay.” Her voice is kind of sing-song, but it doesn’t bother me today. My mother goes back to her game, and I think how it’s likely just this reassurance she is wanting to hear, too. The familiar bird trill is further away now, maybe two yards over, and I hear a house finch singing next door. Yes, I think. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.
The tiny baby rat
and the spotted towhee
whose little dead bodies I’d placed
inside the pots of succulents
in my mother’s back yard
and for weeks and weeks
I honored
and brought flowers to and
loved with all of me
have disappeared.
I tell myself maybe
it was divine intervention
but I only feel sad
and somehow violated
on their behalf
and mine.
I am grateful I got to see them
that one day
their two little heads
poking out of the nest
side by side
beaks to the sky
grateful the mama hummingbird
didn’t seem to worry about me
but as dear as it was
I can’t seem to separate my anguish
that mostly I missed
the whole thing
because I couldn’t be there
living by
my mango tree.
The white-crowned sparrow
dunks his head
again and again
in the fresh bird water
all fluff and delight
an honor
to sit here
in my courtyard
watching.
What beats this?
The mockingbird greets me for the second morning in a row. He is on a different electric pole today, one pole north of yesterday’s. He’s my first mockingbird for 2022. I worried when I was in Palm Springs last week because I didn’t hear one. (I am good at worrying. I even wondered if something was wrong. Two years ago there were so many there, more than I’d ever known. Could there be a dearth of them this year?) I stand in the driveway, head back, looking up at him. “Good morning,” I say, happy to see him, happy he is happy. I don’t remember to look at anything else, to check the top of the ridge for hawks, to take in the sky. I only notice I am dressed too warmly for the sun, and when I walk back in the gate, I feel the cool air of the shade on my face. My wishes to each of you. May it be a good day. And if there is grief or anger or terror in it, may there be an unexpected moment of love or kindness or joy.
No Holds Barred 