It’s May Day
Thursday, May 1st, 2008May 1, May Day around the world. A time to wear red, kiss a Commie for Christ, share the flowers in homemade baskets, and listen to the birds singing through open windows.
I worked and puttered on the ‘puter ’till, 2, slept like a baby, and am awake and at the keyboard only a few minutes after 9.
I’m beginning to think that, when serene, 7 or 7 1/2 hours sleep is my natural rhythm, plus a power doze sometime in the day, perhaps, but not a planned one.
I’ve woken up the upstairs, remade the day bed and opened the screen, sitting here contemplating the sight outside my window while the cpu wakes up, like my house is doing, like I’m doing, like the birds did hours ago.
And oh, the birds. I hear the caw caw caw of the crow or the grackel, today they drown out the peck peck peck of “my” woodpecker, I hear more other distinct calls and songs than I’ve been able to count, since I’ve yet to learn their language. But I will. This season, I am learning their calls, their sounds, because I want to know, really know, if they have found their mates, if their eggs have hatched, if the fledglings are safe, and when they fledge.
I listen to the tree that strains to caress my open window. Just another foot perhaps, a yard at most, and I could pull the leaves right inside the room. I realize it is the maple, the one in the west neighbor’s side yard; oh, my god, it is the same branch that I have prayed from my kitchen window that they would cut off. The beautiful branch at my window is part of that nearly dead, surely dying tree, ill for who knows how many decades of its long long life. (more…)
