September 8, 2012

Thick bands of dark clouds against pale gray, and the rusty two note call of a cardinal start the morning.  A truck hauling a huge boat rounded the corner . . . got to be a fisherman.  Who else gets up so early on a Saturday, runners, fishers, and the insomniacs!  Maybe the dog walkers as well.  The elegant lady, today in gray sweats, just jogged past with her big fluffy white dog looking a lot more comfortable than she does when I see her in heels and a suit walking that dog during the week.   A little breeze is flickering through the branches.  I can see that cardinal but in this light it looks black, not the usual orange and gray-brown, just a silhouette.  Today a front is supposed to come through bringing cooler temperatures and drier air, and most people will be glad of it.  When there are so many clouds the sunrise is usually more full of color but this morning just gray on gray.

Seagulls just went wheeling past in their loose ragged flock, screeching and dipping, seagulls or terns, gray and black and bright white figures, flying swiftly if not in any rigid formation like geese, coming in ahead of weather I guess, don't see them away from the water except for storms or other disturbances, like this front.  Now the blue jays are up cawing like a couple of little crows, loud and getting louder.  They've come to the water bowl, flapping around getting thoroughly wet, the male first then the female, at least I assume that second one is female, smaller and a little grayer, and not quite as enthusiastic about getting wet.

One Heart

Look at the birds. Even flying

is born

out of nothing. The first sky

is inside you, open

at either end of day.

The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening

one heart to every falling thing.

Li-Young Lee

When I watch the birds fly, sometimes I wish to fly with them, then I think of the first step off the branch, when the terror of falling must fill the young bird's heart, and wonder if I would ever have been so brave to take that step and risk the fall.  Some days, I think flight would be worth any risk, some days I think I would be paralyzed by the fear, some days I think I would fall and never fly.  I will never know about flying except in dreams, and there I have flown and took that leap.  Here in this morning, with light beginning to fill the yard and the clouds lifting so the sun shines beneath them and the early breeze is crossing over into wind, I think I don't have to decide to fly, that the heart, the one heart falling, just keeps falling and falling through the sky inside us over and over.  It keeps its own dreams, falling through the morning, until that falling becomes flight in an instant of belief, and the day begins, and something of that freedom is carried into the hours, filled with so many daily things, so many choices made, standing on that branch!