Friday, December 21, 2018

Be human


A personal note:

I began posting to my blog, ‘Walk to the river,’ more than seven year ago. I began using Facebook to link to my blog and to post other thoughts and photos about five years ago.

My primary intention has been to pay attention to the world within my reach – especially the Kaw River and its environs - and then to share my experience in words and pictures. But I have also branched out in other various directions.  And this too: I enjoy just having a little fun now and then. I try to follow the advice of Wendell Berry: ‘Expect the end of the world. Laugh. / Laughter is immeasurable.’

But now I must lament.

Original content on Facebook is increasingly being drowned out by advertising and ‘shares’. Where have all the faces gone? And where are the words in your own words? All the ‘sponsored’ posts are bad enough. And then it seems that there comes just one more shared post after another. If you like cats, I’d rather see yours. And I do sometimes read a shared article - if you have told me why it was important to you.  And yes, I’m interested in thoughtful political discourse, but will the raging never end?

Oh my – my dear Facebook friends! Sometimes I can’t scroll fast enough.  

What to do?  What to do?

My intention has been to share with you what I personally  think and how I see the world around me. I have tried to do what I can within the limits that Facebook and Blogspot present. After all, waddya expect for nothing, rubber biscuit?

And yet, among all the superfluity and clatter, my posts have indeed reached you now and then. I hope that you have found some of them to have been worth your time and attention. I hope that you have occasionally laughed. And I especially hope that I have encouraged you to walk out into the natural world within your own reach for yourself. 

The river awaits.

And so now this this personal post makes me chuckle just a little bit to myself. Most of ‘you’ will not even have seen this ‘note’ as it sails out onto an endless sea of posts. And in that incessant stream of posts which is Facebook, many personal posts simply swirl down the ever swirling Facebook drain.

This will hardly be news to you, but it should never be forgotten: Facebook is a faceless, unfeeling, behemoth that plays by its own rules for its own ends. Only individuals can care. Only people can be human. And if we aren’t careful, parts of our individual humanity can be stolen or submerged – not just by Facebook – but by various technologies and a culture that is increasingly dehumanizing.

Still, here we are. 

I am glad to see your faces on Facebook and to hear what you are up to now and then. Those personal posts of yours are like the prize at bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks - except that instead of caramel popcorn and peanuts, the Facebox has been filled with rocks and rabbit pellets. Please do not share this if you agree.

And I do wish to thank you for your likes and comments over the years. Especially the comments.

So, now, for those of you who have gotten all the to the bottom of this barrel, here are a few of the human faces of the man himself behind the ‘Walk to the river’ blog - more or less in his natural habitat.

And as they say: see you in the funny papers.




Tuesday, December 11, 2018

The ordinary and extraordinary




To my good friend,

It was a fine winter afternoon. As I crossed the bridge, I saw the Kaw River running very high for this time of year. The lowly island of limestone boulders just beyond the dam was completely submerged under the rushing water. But as I looked again, I saw a handful of white seagulls standing up to their ankles on the summit. 

Now, you and I have walked to the river frequently and we often remark on the changing river current.  But this seemed somewhat beyond remarkable.

I had my device camera along and I have taken countless photos in this place. Still, I thought to myself, why not take just a few more so that you could see what I saw. The day was entirely its own, after all, and not any other.

As I wandered, I saw the familiar and the unexpected woven together. In front of me, the same old river was running in quite a hurry between its banks. I was taking my time. The cold air was biting my exposed fingers, but I was bundled and warm. The sun, nearing the winter solstice and heading downward to the gray fringe of bare branches on the far side of the river, shone with an extraordinarily fine light. And yet, as it often is, it was just me and the river just rolling along.

I took shots from every angle, but not that many. I knew my subject quite well and with very little editing, I think this series of photos came out quite well.

So, Mike, I began by taking these river pictures for you, but I’m sure you won’t mind if I share them with a few other folks.  After all, but we don’t own any of this, but we are indeed most fortunate to be part of it.

bert

P.S. Click on first photo to see all of them as full-sized slideshow.
















Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Circular nonsense Or Ice water is future tea




I walked into a coffee shop and found myself sitting on a bar stool at the counter. I mean, the man at the counter looked as if he might have been me.

‘Weren’t you here yesterday? I said to the older man with a big red nose and a ruddy complexion sitting on a bar stool at the end of the counter. He was drinking iced tea.

‘I think that might have been your former self,’ he said.

‘Well, who are you now? I said.

‘Actually, to tell the truth, I’m not quite sure,’ he replied.  ‘I was wondering almost the very same thing when you walked in.’

‘Well, how about if I join you?’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he said.

I sat down with my glass of iced tea on a bar stool at the counter. As I sat thinking, I slowly and quietly drank my iced tea. I mean, how else would a man drink iced tea? But who was I, after all? I mean, who am I?

Eventually I raised my empty glass and asked the barista for a refill of my regular currant iced tea.

‘Weren’t you in here yesterday?’ the barista asked.

‘Anything’s possible. Are you the barista who was working here then?’ I said.

‘That’s just what you asked me yesterday.’ The young woman set a full glass of iced tea on the counter in front of me.

‘Was I with anyone else?’ I said.

‘Well, it looked to me as if you might be talking to yourself.’

She smiled.

That smile!

Suddenly I remembered that barista. It was her smile. Some things are indeed unforgettable, after all. And she was simply herself.

And that’s when I realized just exactly where I was. I was sitting on a bar stool at the counter at my regular coffee shop drinking my regular iced tea. I mean, I should say that I was drinking the current currant iced tea. I mean, the currant tea tastes just a tad sweeter than the regular pekoe tea. And, of course, yesterday’s water has always been today’s tea. Or it will be. I think. And therefore I am. Or am I?

Iced tea is iced time. Currant or regular, you just add ice. And I was indeed drinking iced tea. But still and nevertheless, who was I? I mean, me?

The bell over the front door dinged. I looked up from where I was slowly and quietly drinking my iced tea to see who it might be.

I had to laugh.

A man with a big red nose and a ruddy complexion was coming through the door. He looked familiar. I wondered if he might know who I am.

Sunday, October 21, 2018

A quiet story from a soft, blue chair in a used bookstore



I wandered into The Dusty Bookshelf with my book bag of books to sell. Holly was working behind the counter and she smiled as she looked up at me. “I’ve got these this time,” I said. “It’ll be just a few minutes,” she replied. We had done this before.

Tall shelves of books stood all around me. I circled around a large wooden table that held small piles of books arranged like daisy petals on a stationary wheel. I quickly glanced at the covers on the top of each pile. None of them quite tempted me to pick them up. Then I took a turn through the children’s books in the back corner nook. Often interesting illustrations and a simple story would draw me in.

Holly had finished looking through my books when I got back to the counter. “I’ll take these,” she said. She had taken most of them this time. I took the store credit as I always did and Holly added my credit to my total on a slip of paper and tucked it back into the credit box. I put the remainder of my books along with one I had found into my bag.

I turned around and then settled into a soft, blue chair that was tucked into the literature section where the M’s begin. Out of the corner of my eye I could still see the central counter piled high with used books on either side. It was an island in a sea of books. Holly stood behind it, cleaning up books, putting fresh plastic dust jackets on the hardbacks. It was just another day in The Dusty Bookshelf.

I looked over at the shelves next to my shoulder and then I pulled out Carson McCullers’ book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and began to read. The book began easily with the simple life of two mutes, Singer and Anatopoulis, in their southern town. They talked silently back and forth to each other with their hands. As I read to myself I looked up from my book from time to time. Dinah, the sleek, black, bookstore cat was meandering around the store. I watched her sniff at a man’s tennis shoes where he stood looking at a picture book over near the front window.

A mother and a son came in through the near door. They simply had to be that. Then without a word, they separated, each going their own way. The young man looked to be in his twenties. He had a soft, round face. His mother quickly found a book and then sat waiting for her son in a wooden chair. With her book resting unopened on her lap, she searched the faded carpet at her feet. Her face looked worn. The young man was taking a considerable amount of time. He looked up and down through the tall shelves of used books, disappearing occasionally from my sight. Then, eventually, he returned and approached his mother with a large handful of books. “I may have found too many,” he said. And then her face turned suddenly bright as she smiled up at him. “You always pick good ones,” she said.

I looked away. I was not part of their world, after all. I spotted Dinah on the other side of the store and then I went back to my book..

A few pages later, a younger man and his daughter - again I made my presumptions - came in through the far door. They approached Holly and said that that were looking for a particular book. I didn’t quite hear the title. Holly walked them back towards the young adult books. In only a few minutes, they had returned to the counter without finding the book they had wanted, but the girl had found another book instead. “I’ll take this one.” She held it out to Holly. I watched from behind the pages of my book as the father watched his young daughter, a slight smile in his eyes. She reached into a small purse and handed some money to Holly. Then the girl stepped over to where Dinah sat near the audio books shelf. She carefully offered her fingers for Dinah to smell, and then petted the cat’s shiny black back. Dinah stretched appreciatively.

The store had nearly emptied. I read, glancing up from time to time. A young man in a ball cap, who had seemed to have been looking somewhat aimlessly for books behind the far shelves, approached the counter. He appeared to be trying to find some kind of an opening with Holly. I perked up my ears. I couldn’t help myself. After a few words, I could just hear him say, “I like the streaks in your hair.” Holly laughed and gave him another minute or so of small talk before gently letting him go.

The Dusty Bookshelf was quiet. Holly had gone off somewhere in the back. I sat thinking. I had finished the first chapter of my book. Singer was alone. His friend, Antonopaulos, had been sent off to an insane asylum. I knew how the story would end, but I couldn’t remember the middle. Maybe I would read more of the story some other day.

I put the book back where I had found it and sat for a minute longer, looking out at all of the waiting books.

Then I looked down. Dinah must have slipped silently over to where I was sitting while I had been reading - and watching other people looking for whatever they had been looking for. After a careful look into my eyes, Dinah jumped up into my lap. She kneaded a bed for herself and then quickly fell asleep in the crook of my arm.

I thought for a moment that perhaps I should not have put the McCullers book back onto the shelf. I couldn’t quite reach the book again with a sleeping cat in my lap. Bu it didn’t matter. I had my own thoughts. I listened to the music playing faintly out of a speaker somewhere over my head.

By the clock on the wall, it was only a little after three. I really had no place I would rather be. A few more customers came and went. Among the few, a young boy with his younger sister trailing behind him had passed by my chair. I was full of suppositions. Dinah catnapped in my lap.

And then it was only ten minutes or so before Dinah woke up from her nap. She nimbly jumped down to resume her unappointed rounds.

I had myself come into The Dusty bookshelf only a little less than an hour ago. I had exchanged a handful of old books for fourteen dollars in store credit. Bought one off the bargain shelf for a buck. Read part of another book for free. I was well ahead of the game.

I got up from my soft, blue chair, picked up my nearly empty book bag, and walked the few steps back to where I found Holly sitting cross legged on the floor among the piles of unsorted recent arrivals. I asked about the music. It turned out to be a random Pandora compilation of the different musical tastes of The Dusty Bookshelf clerks over time. I told her that the music had suited me and then I wished Holly a good day. In turn she smiled back at me and wished me the same. And then I walked out of the near door of The Dusty Bookshelf into a nearly perfect early fall day.


Monday, September 10, 2018

What this photo does not show you


What this photo does not show you:

A blue-tailed dragonfly with whirring wings, hovering, darting – actually, there are two dragonflies, one chasing the other one in flight together, making curlicues and rapid ascents into the sky. Sometimes one lone dragonfly rests so very lightly on the tip of a thin green blade and that blade arcs yet ever so slightly closer to the surface of the water.

The soft summer breeze itself has just barely enough breath to move those very thin blades of the green bending plant growing up from the muck on the bottom of my pond. And the surface of the water itself is not quite still.

There are water spiders skating and then resting on nearly invisible outstretched legs. Each leg bends the surface of the water into a tiny circle.

And then as I sit quietly watching the pond, I feel the lightest whispers of a variable wind against my own skin.

And there’s more. I see wasps – blue-blackish - brown and yellowish – wasps here and there on the limestone rocks edging the small pond. The wasps with their flickering wings seem to appear and disappear like magic.

And I in the clear water, I can see goldfish. Very orange. Shining orange. Glittering like scaly, fish-shaped oranges swimming slowly in the pond. They too come and they go. They hover in the water like dragonflies in the summer air. Except that the fish are not really like dragonflies at all. They’re fish. With just a wave of a tail, one or another goldfish simply slips from my sight beneath the lily pads floating on the surface of the water. Who could even tell which fish is which except perhaps another fish?

And if you look carefully again at the photo, you might perhaps see two pale yellow water lily blossoms. You might see those pale yellow petals so very carefully arrayed on each blossom. And then you might wish to lean over the edge of the pond for a closer look. I have declared to you that the water lilies were a pale yellow, but those are merely words - hardly the very true colors of the water lily petals, after all. But for now, ‘pale yellow’ will have to do.

And in the next moment a single white butterfly flutters by, settling for a moment on a tiny white flower with an even tinier yellow center. It is only a miniscule blossom poking barely a half inch or so above the water - an itty bitty bloom arising from a curling strand of anacharis, an underwater plant that tangles in profusion beneath the surface of the pond. Perhaps you might even see, if you would look again at the photo that I took, a small portion of anacharis  strand along the surface of the pond near where the thin green blades arc. But I would like to encourage you to scoop up a dripping handful of those anacharis strands from the riotous tangle of this slithering, slimy underwater water plant so that you might gain more complete sense of a picture that only shows a much simpler surface of things.

And then I would ask you to look still closer, over at one side of the pond. There’s a spider’s web, woven from the finest spider’s silk and strung between some of those thin green blades of the bending plant and the limestone rocks that line the edge of the small garden pond. I have sometimes seen a long-legged spider waiting near her web - but not on this day.

And there might be a yellow swallowtail over by the border phlox. And perhaps a monarch sailing by somewhere beyond the corner of the frame of the picture and then dropping down over the fence into the neighbor’s yard.  And perhaps I should at least mention, that on a not so very long ago summer morning, as I sat on my patio in the summer shade, I heard a mourning dove calling.

Who could ever see and hear and touch it all?

But now and finally we come to where all of these wandering words that I have written for this post began:

It was the reflections of the thin green blades –
the curving
crossing
sometimes nearly straight
thin dark lines
against the reflected white-blue sky –
the blackness of blades that I noticed as I looked into my pond,
truly insubstantial lines
that I could never, ever touch,
real and unreal lines
living within a nether world immeasurably beyond my grasp.

And so from where I sat near my pond on a particular summer day, I thought I might try to take a photo of those curving, crossing, sometimes nearly straight thin dark lines. Of course it would be no more than a picture of a kind of illusion. An image only of thin dark lines wavering somehow, somewhere between me and the far side of the known world.

And then, on that summer morning not so long ago, I leaned back in my patio chair to look for what else I might have missed seeing around me. And I realized that I had missed seeing nearly everything. I couldn’t see everything. Or in truth, I could only begin to see everything.
And then I thought to try to tell you something about it.

And so this post is to remind myself and also to remind you of a simple reality: for so very, very  much less time than it took for me just to write these many words that you are now reading – in those few seconds as I sat watching the world by my little garden pond, I saw what I saw and then for a moment I imagined that I saw it all. The world not of many parts, but whole.

And then, just as suddenly, in the very next moment, with the splish-splash of my bare foot splashing into the water, everything vanished – all of it - everything. And then, there I was once again, just sitting by my garden pond. The world was before me as it had always been.

Dragonflies rested on thin green blades over the water.

And the water reflected everything.




Saturday, August 25, 2018

Remembering in the rain


Audio


**

Text

I was walking across the Kaw River Bridge. The rain was coming steadily down, stippling the surface of the water below me. The trees along the gray river were distant and shadowy. There was a soggy sameness to everything around me, but, in truth, I wasn’t discontent.

It was just a steady rain. More than welcome in August. My umbrella had kept me mostly dry as I walked, but by the time I got to the bridge, my shoes were pretty wet. I turned to look over the railing and I saw a great blue heron standing on a rock in the shallow water near the bank of the Kaw River. The heron was near enough to where I stood up on the bridge that I could see that its gray feathers were completely soaked. But the heron simply stood there, motionless, just staring out at the river.

And then I thought of Audrey.

Audrey is a barista I know.  Our separate paths will cross at a coffee shop as we both head in different directions. Our actual time together will not be much more than a bit of conversation and a glass of iced tea passed from her hand to mine.

And so I had seen her once again, not that many steps ago. It had been just another forgettable Sunday afternoon at Aimee’s. I had been sitting at the counter with a couple of other older guys. I could see that it was beginning to rain as I stared out through the front plate glass  windows. There was a little idle conversation in the air. I sipped my iced tea. Just passing a little time.  

Audrey and another barista, Riley, were putting paper trays of eggs into the refrigerator in the kitchen area below where we were sitting, stocking up for the next day. There were jokes bantered back and forth from one side of the counter to the other about what might happen if someone dropped a whole tray of eggs on the floor.

And then Audrey picked up an egg from one of the trays and held it in her hand. Standing just a few feet away from three not very wise men sitting on the other side of the counter, she looked over and said, “Did you know that you can squeeze an egg in the palm of your hand as hard as you want and it won’t break?” She squeezed and a blur of yellow yolk arced just past Riley’s head. We all laughed.

“It wasn’t supposed to work like that,” Audrey said with a rueful look on her face. And indeed  the egg trick had worked a couple of Sunday’s  earlier. Several of us had passed around a raw egg and had squeezed it as hard as we could. The egg hadn’t broken - then. We speculated that it had something to do with the shape of the hand and the shape of the egg. Physics.

But on this Sunday afternoon it was hard for me to stop laughing at the failed egg trick. It wasn’t just the egg breaking, squirting its insides across the room. It was the look on Audrey’s face. The look was very nearly indescribable. Surprise doesn’t begin to cover it. And rueful is just another word. It was one of those times when you just had to be there.

After a few moments I was still laughing as Audrey cleaned up the mess. “This is the high point of my day,” I said. And then then after a pause I reflected: “But then, the day isn’t over yet, so who knows?”

Audrey and I had talked about what each other’s high points over the last day or week had been.

And then I had realized that I had been asking the wrong question. I changed it. “What was the most memorable thing that happened to you recently?” But that question was really no easier to answer.

And then it was closing time. The baristas had their real lives to get back to and I had a slow,   easy walk in the rain ahead of me. I really had nothing in particular in mind. I walked towards the river as I often do. The rain came down. The sidewalks were wet. Not very many people out. Cars splashing through puddles. Sometimes one day seems to blur into the next, but I still enjoy the walking, seeing what I will see.

And so, eventually, there I was, walking across the Kaw River Bridge in the rain. I saw the heron standing. And then it turned its head to one side and stabbed its long beak into the water. And then, almost like magic, a small white wriggling fish appeared in its beak.

And that is when I thought of Audrey.

That is how memory works. I don’t quite understand it. What we remember seems to slip in and out of our minds faster that we can grasp our forgotten moments. And even our more memorable moments quickly fade as we move from one place and time to the next.

And so then, on that rainy afternoon on the bridge, a moment of life popped into my mind. This time it was Audrey’s face. Her smooth, freckled cheeks. Her brown curly hair. Her hand, dripping with broken shells and slippery egg goo. And I could almost see it all in my mind. And especially, for just a moment, I had quite memorably seen Audrey’s eyes as she glanced with surprise into mine. And in those few moments as I watched the heron, I wondered what Audrey might have seen in my eyes.

But it was the rain was coming down, steadily. I continued walking, circling around until finally I was below the bridge. I imagined that the heron might still be standing on the rock just below the bank. I walked carefully towards the river in the wet grass - but not carefully enough. Suddenly the heron was flying away from me over the river, its outstretched great gray wings pulling through the rain with strong easy strokes. And in no time at all, it was just me and the river. I stood there watching the rain, my memories slipping in and out of my grasp.

I suppose that the memory thing is all a kind of trick. We see. We forget. And then, sometimes, we remember again. And then we forget all over again.

Life seems to happen in unexpected moments. And if we are lucky, we can laugh at each other and at ourselves. How indeed could we ever forget that life is full of surprises?  And laughter. If we are looking, we can see our lives in each other’s eyes. And then we move on.

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

bamboo 8



This is a photo/video record of the mobile - bamboo 8 - that I made this summer. (~ July 2018).To fully appreciate the mobile you will need to see it for yourself. It now takes me about 30 minutes to reassemble the mobile and fine tune the balance. I will put bamboo 8 back up again from time to time - if only to watch it move again for myself. But I also hope to show this work.

bamboo 8 cost less than a dollar in materials. The 8 bamboo canes grew in my friends yard. The garden twine comes from Cottin's. The rope for the sky hook was scrounged from the side of the road on a walk. The tools I already had.

The actual time it took to make this mobile was perhaps 15 hours over 3 days, but I could neither conceive nor construct this mobile without years of playing with gravity and balance and experimenting with various materials and ways of balancing and joining things together.

bamboo 8 occupies a space 8 feet deep by 25 feet in diameter. There are eight bamboo canes about 14 feet long wrapped at the approximate balance points with twine. Double loops of twine hold the canes together in their appropriate order. The fine balancing takes a light and careful touch. It all hangs from a sky hook.

To say the least, I remain surprised that I was able to make this particular mobile in my backyard and in such a relatively small amount of time. And it is primarily the movement that amazes me. Even in what appears to be still air, bamboo 8 moves. bamboo 8 is both stable and fragile. It will collapse in stronger winds. And the bundle of bamboo generally rests in the rafters of my garage. I have likely spent as much time reassembling the mobile and watching it move as it took to construct and balance it the first time.

So these are merely photos and videos. Enjoy looking at them as you wish. But whether flower or river or sunset or mobile - or even each other - the physical reality is the 'thing' to see and to experience. We live in space and time - not in the two dimensions of screens.













The full video record on YouTube







Thursday, July 26, 2018

Kite and shadow


And so another day came so brightly,
the yellow sun rose high and warm,
the winds blew variable and lightly -
and I stepped out onto my front porch, my feet so bare,
the sky was so blue,
the true color of the clear, perfectly congenial air.
And as I watched and I waited
I could think of nothing quite better than flying a kite.
And since there was no one else around,
I went ahead and imagined someone -
a whimsical someone like you - to go fly a kite with me.

And so I carelessly imagined you, only you,
waiting expectantly for me at Central field.
You might be smiling as I unfurled my colorful kite
and then laughing at me as I untangled the line.
And then there would be nothing more for us to say
as we watched and we waited.

And then, and only then,
when I finally held my kite aloft, our breaths bated,
our eyes meeting and then quickly looking away,
at that moment there would finally and truly be nothing more
that two human beings could possibly do –
but hope.

So I closed my eyes ever so slightly,
the sun, the wind, the forgotten dripping of rain,
even those bygone tears fell so far out of time and mind -
and then I simply let go of reality with the freshening of the wind
and I quickly became the lively, lifting kite.

Your memory held tight the line, and love flew with bright nylon colors.
The ascending kite flew still higher, catching the wind, letting it go,
fluttering, flapping, streamers streaming -
the kite soaring with rhymes and reasons only the wind could secretly know.
And if I became the kite in the sky,
my imaginary you became the shadow.
And then in time we magically switched places.
And then it was I, bewitched, laughing and dancing, across the soft green grass,
the grass green grass so softly yielding beneath my feet
as I so carefree and carelessly ran underneath the bright colored kite
flying up in the sky blue sky so high.

And as I looked up, my eyes opened up so very wide and then they closed again.
I remembered the plans and promises that no one had ever had made
for this one unexpectedly glorious day.
All of our imagined dreams dreamt and undreamt so long and almost forever ago -
our unspoken hopes for loves both great and small
and perhaps only some few cares recalled,
those of no more moment
than a kite in a sky blue sky.

And then perhaps and yet again perhaps -
perhaps I hadn’t imagined you at all.
Only wishing that you were with me almost made it so –
but then you and I would only ever finally touch when
heaven and earth would truly meet.
Perhaps we might simply be waiting together, apart,
with only the wind whispering dying and undying words,
words that I might hear but never understand.
And there might nothing more that two human beings could possibly say.

But today – this moment only - is about the colored nylon kite –
soaring, swooping, dipping, looping, pulling against the string –
and the laughing.

And so, I will say this to you, my imaginary and truly love:
there have been some days past and there will be  more days yet to come
and perhaps we have yet to meet the day -
that one day when you, my heart, will hold a kite aloft on an open field
and I will hold the line
and then the wind will laugh and the sun will touch our faces
and love will fly
and our own imagined embraces will come true
and then finally the sailing kite and her shadow
will together so lightly touch the earth.

**
Click on the first photo and then right arrow to quickly view the kite flying sequence.


















Monday, June 25, 2018

Wren


People talk about the circle of life. What we usually don’t say out loud is that the circle is a circle of life and death.

Yesterday evening as I was coming back from a trip to the compost pile, I heard the sounds of fluttering in the garage where two Carolina wrens had made a nest. Wrens are tiny, loud, soft rust-brown birds with their tail feathers cocked skyward. My wife and I had watched them flying in and out during the past few weeks. We had seen and heard them trilling from the wire leading out to the garage.

I looked into the shadows and saw a wren flapping frantically, spinning round and around upside down from one extended leg. As I got very close, I could see that the wren had gotten itself entangled in something from its nest. It must have been struggling for some time. The wren’s tail feathers had been beaten off.

I reached out my hand, closing it gently and firmly around the tiny body to try to calm it. I carefully snipped away the threads that had been wrapped tightly around the wren’s leg. The threads looked and felt like they might have come from some bits of plastic twine that the wrens must have used to line their nest.

I carried the wren out into the middle of our back yard and put it down in the grass. The leg that had been caught stuck straight out behind the wren. The wren flapped its wings, but it could not fly. The wren seemed as if it might be otherwise intact, but it could only bounce awkwardly over the grass. It was alive, but without its tail feathers and a severely dislocated leg it could not survive.

I placed the wren at the edge of the lawn on a bed of some dried surprise lily leaves near the peonies bushes and put down a small saucer of water near the wren. I set a five gallon bucket upside down over the helpless bird, still breathing and blinking its eyes. I weighted the bucket with a couple of bricks and I hoped, at least, that the wren could rest in relative safety and the dim light.

My wife was visiting family, so I rode my bicycle over to a friend’s house to ask him what he thought I should do. We talked of ways of putting the wren out of its suffering, but nothing seemed possible in the moment.

Night was falling when I returned home. I saw two mourning doves sitting on the wire near where the wren was resting. I didn’t raise the bucket to see how the wren was doing. I went inside and had a late supper. Eventually I went to bed.

In the morning, I went outside to check on the wren. The wren had passed away during the night. I buried the wren’s body in the earth near where its life had ended.

I must tell you that I felt more sorrow over the suffering of this one wren than I have felt about any other living being in a long time. It seemed all out of proportion, but perhaps not. It was life, however small. Yet if I felt about the suffering of each life in the world all together the way I felt about this wren, I could not live.

I set a bit of broken brick over the place where the wren’s body lay. I took some photos of the moonflowers by the garage.

And now I will not tell you more of my thoughts. I have told you what happened. You can try to find your own meaning if you want to.

As for me, I have some work to do and I’m glad for that. Sparrows are flying back and forth to a neighbor’s feeder. A robin was grooming its feathers earlier on the back fence. It looks as if it might rain again.

And this is just one small story in the circle of life and death.