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.



Saturday, June 23, 2018

Wishing you were here



I wanted to tell you something. Perhaps you might realize that because the moon is so far away from the earth and because light travels so fast, no matter the physical distance between two people on the earth, from the moon’s distant perspective you and I might simply be standing along a straight line merely a blink of an eye away from each other.

And so, when I woke up in the middle of the night and I saw moonlight streaming through the kitchen window, I leaned in slightly over the sink and looked up at the moon high above me. Suddenly, it seemed to me as if you might be standing right behind me. But when I turned around to look, the room was dark and you weren’t there. I could almost hear your voice whispering to me.

I turned back and leaned into moonlight once again. And then I found myself a thousand miles away, standing outside your bedroom window in the moonlight. I thought for a moment to peek into your window to see if you were asleep, but instead I just left some moonlight on your windowsill.

In the next instant I was standing once again in my own darkened kitchen. Turning, turning, I wanted merely to put my arms around you for just a few moments. Only for a moment and then I would let you go.

But even when we lived in the same town, it most mostly passing time that we spent together. We were close enough to hug, but we rarely did. We talked now and then. And when we looked into each other face’s and caught each other’s glance, we quickly looked away. We were close and not so close. I suppose that it was near enough for then, but we were also just passing each other by, going on with our separating lives into different distant worlds.

And still, tonight, I miss you.

I just wanted to tell you that when I see the moon shining so brightly, sometimes you come into my mind. I hold you so very lightly and then in time I go back to bed.

Wishing you were here - to put my arms around you, to hold you, and then, to let go once again.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

I look at rocks



Sometimes, if I’ve got nothing better to do, I look at rocks.

I suppose that you might say that I’m just wasting my time by looking at rocks. But what else should I do? Watch the unhurriedly drifting clouds drifting unhurriedly across a sky blue sky? Or count the ripples rippling on the rippling river? Or be dazzled by the dazzling sun dappling and dazzling through the leafy green leaves? Or I suppose that I might simply recline myself lightly upon the earth and let the good old world turn at the world’s good old pace around and around and around me as I recline?

And then, eventually, as a matter of course, as day eventually turns to night, I might look up and out and far away and wait for the latest early distant starlight to twinkle into my blinking eyes at the dizzying speed of light. Or I could empty out the clutter from my rattled mind and simply gaze longingly into the face of a full moon rising. Or perhaps on some other day becoming night, might I again seek out a glowing new crescent of reflected sunlight in the descending indigo darkness?

I mean, after all has been said and done, just what, after all, in the world, would have been better for me to have done? And I am quite likely to have said too much already.

And yet, I confess, I am not finished with speaking. There are still so considerably many more barely notable opportunities for watching and wondering. Grass grows. Flowers bloom. Snowflakes fall in winter. And have you seen cottonwood fluff floating like dandelion seeds on a light breeze on a spring afternoon? And of course, one thing is hardly the same thing as another thing at all.

But I must still tell you even more. Have you noticed lately and yet again how so very many things just take their own sweet time doing whatever sweet thing it is that they do. And yet – and yet, I tell you this - if you blink, you might miss seeing some marvel altogether.

And yet I am not finished. I must also add still more uncountable things to what I must also recount.

There are all of those flying birds and those buzzing bees. And don’t get me started on those cottontail bunnies or those teeny tiny red spider mites scurrying around on limestone rocks on the levee by the river on a warm day in May.

It is indeed as Annie Dillard says so well in ‘Pilgrim at Tinker Creek’:

There are many things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But - and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat paddling from its den, will you count that sight a chip of copper only, and go on your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny. But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.   (p. 16)

And then I have finally come back to this. I had always meant to circle back around to the question of time. Let me be quite clear. My question is this:  just what is my time is good for? What I am talking about is the time when I am merely and simply looking for things for me to look at and see for what they are. That time is my own time. I don’t think of it as disposable time. It is my free time. Valuable time. Possible time. I am simply not about to carelessly throw away the gift of just-being-alive time.

And so, finally, here it is: If I have no other pressing obligations – no people to see, no places to go, no other things to do - that is, I mean, besides looking at rocks – I look at rocks.

Sometimes.

Consider the alternatives. Why, after all, would I waste my time on things I cannot do much about - like politics or the stock market and all of those other scurrying scurrilous current affairs?

Now, I know that you might say that I cannot do anything about the rocks, either. This is true.

But, at least, I find that rocks can be interesting. They are real things. I can stack them or throw them or just not be able budge them even one silly millimeter at all. I can look at them. Or, if I find just the right rock, I might skip it across the river. Of course the skipping rock probably wouldn’t even make it half the way across the Kaw River, even though that often lazy and quite brown river isn’t really all that broad. And then, at some point, that skipping rock would just sink like a stone. That’s life for you.

But in some bit of easy time in between the so-called hard times and hard places, I might just take a look at the very substantial rocks at hand and just wonder about rocks. You know: real, hard, old, unmoving rocks.

I mean, just how has paying attention to all of that virtual jibber jabber been working out for you lately? And have you actually spent any time looking at rocks in your own dear time?

But pardon me.  I meant only to talk about my own sweet time. Not yours.

And here’s just another bit of a conundrum about time that I would like to share with you. After all of my careful attention to the wonders of the natural world – and time - I have often discovered that just utterly wasting a little time, now and then, turns out to be the very best thing I could have done with my time. Who knew?

But, once again let me be clear. I don’t necessarily mean that the time I spend looking at rocks is wasted. Nevertheless, my reasoning finally comes tumbling down to this quite obvious absurdity: In the end, for me, looking at rocks often turns out to be neither a complete waste of time nor the best thing I could do. And so what else is new?

Therefore, if I have nothing better to do than to look at rocks, there seems to be nothing better for me to do than to look at rocks.

QED

And one postscript: Now your time, of course, is your own precious time and I do understand a little something about pressing obligations. But if you want my advice, spend a little time looking at rocks. And let’s face it, you could do worse.