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.
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?
This time I don’t see the insects
(gnats, maybe? no-see-ums?)
but twice
I watch
the lizard dart across the gray cement
in my corner of my mother’s back yard.
Dart and gobble.
Dart and gobble.
It makes me happy for him.
How did I live so long
among lizards
without ever seeing 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.
I am in the corner of my mother’s yard drinking my tea in the late afternoon. I see a shape perched on the dead yucca stem at the top eastern side of the ridge, the one where the red-tailed hawks’ offspring often sits. I don’t know for sure if it’s him or one of his parents, but he turns in my direction when I look through my binoculars. “Oh, hello, love,” I whisper. When I put down the binoculars, my eyes still scan the ridgeline near him. I spot an odd shape a few “inches” to the north of his spot, maybe seven yards away from his yucca stem. I squint at it as it moves and my mind makes sense of it, the almost-full waxing moon rising in the daylight sky. Its movement is quick, surprising. What began as a smooth white arc that didn’t belong with the ragged edges of the chaparral morphs into the moon’s face, her eyes and mouth visible, only a bit of the left side still unseen. She shares the ridgeline with the red-tailed hawk, both companion and blessing. And both of them are both to me, small, odd human in my chair below, honored to pieces, and made whole.
No Holds Barred 