-
Blood Flowing
In cold weather, cardinals nest together in the boughs of evergreen trees, huddling as a group for warmth. Just now, as the faintest line of light ran along the eastern horizon, I heard the faint pip of a cardinal in the large pine outside. And I have to wonder, as I sometimes do, if they stretch when they wake up. Dogs do. Cats do. Do cardinals open their masked eyes , yawn with their conical beaks — that’s another question…do birds yawn? I can’t recall if I ever saw any of my chickens yawn — or open their wings wide and get in a good pinion-cracking stretch, just to get…
-
The Beginning Of March
The coffee tasted especially good this morning; my wife found a new variety at a local store and it is now a favorite. I stepped outside to clip my fingernails, careful to keep the sun behind me as it slashed across the needle points and glass shards of frost on the grass. While I was about my business, I listened to the birds calling to each other across the hollers. Are the back-and-forth songs merely a “Hello! How are you this morning?” or are they a communication of important information, the inflection and tone and volume carrying nuances that only an avian heart can catch and decipher? The feeders were…
-
Passages
There’s snow on the ground today. I wish you were here to see it, girl. When I walked up to your grave after I got home from work, I thought of how much you loved the white stuff, how you’d throw yourself into banks of it and run around like your tail was on fire, how you once tricked your Mama by hiding a vole in the snow and then redirecting her attention, and how you’d scoop a small pile of it onto your nose and run to me, knowing that I’d laugh like a fool. I used to accuse you of being a Viking dog, do you…
-
Departures
The hummingbirds are migrating south now, and it seems that our regulars have already left. Last week, right in the middle of the repugnancy in the cellar, I had scrubbed and cleaned all the feeders and filled them with fresh nectar. The next day after doing so, I went out to watch the little things as they fed, but none were there. Since last Thursday, I have seen only one hummingbird, and he was a male with a very short bill that I have never seen before, probably a migrating fellow passing through and stopping off at a friendly place he’d heard about in some avian chatroom. I looked all…
-
Swarm Day
It wasn’t quite Texas-hot, but it was a reasonable facsimile thereof. 91F, and it’s supposed to be the same for the rest of the week. No rain in sight. It looks like September, but it feels July-ish. When I arrived home and stepped out into the front yard, I was immediately under attack. At least once a year, we get what I call Dragonfly Day, a hot afternoon in which clouds of dragonflies make their appearance. And I don’t mean “a lot” of dragonflies. I mean “Could someone please call Ramses II and let him know that another one of those plagues is going down?”-sized swarms of the things. They…
-
Layksuh Hayull
I sat outside this morning with bible, breviary, and notebook, my coffee steaming in the cool and sugared mugginess of the day’s initial pages. Up in the woods in the direction of the new-born sun, a screech owl called, sounding as always like a tiny spectral horse whinnying. His appearance is early this year; I usually don’t hear the screech owls until mid-to-late September. And I sat and sipped and wondered if his eerie song was considered a harbinger in the mythos of any peoples. The squadron of the buzzing bullets we call hummingbirds were about their business, and watching them reminded me of something from my pilgrimage to Gethsemani…
-
Savoring The Weariness
The weekend is ebbing and I’m sitting here, freshly showered and dressed in clean cotton and winding down, waiting to get sleepy. It’s a marvel that I’m not already sleepy, because I am bone-tired. But not because of physical exertion. A little while ago, I went out and picked some okra, re-tied some of the heavy-laden tomato plants, and watered all the flowers and vegetables. The humidity is hanging in the air like gray tulle, and I sweated heavily merely standing still with a garden hose. I needed the shower, but I didn’t tax myself. No, I am weary because this has been a weekend spent thinking, spent deep within…
-
Hourglass
Summer is on us in full force. Driving to work this morning, the haze in the air gave a taste of drowsiness, of lassitude. The mountains to the south of us are famously known as the Great Smoky Mountains, but the Clinch Mountains in which I live and move and have my daily being are smoky enough under their own rippling power. I passed a group of cows with their calves and noticed one little heifer with a white face, placid beneath a locust tree. She looked as if she’d forgotten to remove her cold cream when she tumbled out of bed at first light. I believe our eyes met…
-
Weeding Waltz
Weeding Waltz Before the sun could turn its engine over I worked my blade between the rows of plants My shoulders pulling, slicing weeds and clover The rhythm of my motions like a dance; The earth my partner as we spun and dipped And music, green between us, urged us on Until I balked, surprised the hour had slipped Away, renewed and blinking sweat at dawn. ~ S.K. Orr [inspired in part by Francis Berger’s musings on manual labor]
-
From A Near Distance
I stepped outside before dawn this morning to listen to the first birdsong of the day. Standing in the damp grass, I drew a deep lungful of sweet air and kept still, listening, listening. Off in the northern sky, traveling south by southeast, was what I first took to be an airplane. But the light was over-bright, had no flashing lights, and was traveling at a very high and steady speed, like a lethargic comet. I watched the light until it was gone from my sight, and then I went back inside and fetched my phone to check my suspicion. And there it was. An app on my phone confirmed…