The Feeding I swam upwards from the deep, velvet darkness of a good night’s sleep. Robins belted out their sunrise song through the open window, and farther in the distance meadowlarks added their liquid notes. The sparrows in the top of the fir tree squabbled amongst themselves. Then I remembered. Jack Sparrow! Last night I had left him under the fold of his rag in his bucket-nest, shut in my bookroom. I just about sprang out of bed and ran down the hall to see how he was. But then, a thought held me still. What if Jack had not made it through the night? Maybe the shock of…
Jack Sparrow
The Tumble The sparrows squabbled in the top of the tall blue-green fir tree in my backyard. As I sat on the deck early one evening last July, I could not see them, but they carried on with their bird-argument among the needles and cones of the fir tree. They had a nest up there, I knew, and I imagined the parents feeding the little sparrows bugs as the nestlings jostled and squawked in their nest. Noisy little things. My black cat, Taz, strolled around the corner of the house. Something caught his eye in the mown grass under the pine tree. He trotted over,…
Leaf Courage
I saw it there a couple weeks ago, resting among green leaves and flowers. A single yellow heart, its tether disconnected from its source. The edges of the heart were ruffled and it was a bit battered with flecks of brown on its surface. Even though a bright red flower pulsed next to the heart, and farther away a white flower blazed and deep purple flowers shone, the yellow heart’s thrum stopped my footsteps. Then it seemed the yellow heart lifted the slightest bit and hovered there over the leaves it had rested on. It whispered, “See me. Feel me.”…
August Autumn
It’s early August. Even before I flip a page of the calendar, I know it. Just a week or two ago, I walked down the little lane of pine trees that leads to my horse corral to let the horses out to graze for the evening. The falling sun highlighted the tawny grass of late summer in the pasture past the trees. Its warm dried grass-straw scent drifted through the pine needles. Then, I heard it. The crickets, out in the grasses, began their autumn song. Like an orchestra hidden in the grass, I imagined them rubbing their upper and…
Fence Lines
It’s the end of May and the beginning of a hot day. I trudge up the hill, next to a four wire barbed wire fence. The hawthorne and chokecherry bushes are blooming by the masses. Their creamy white blossoms create a misty haze where the bushes grow on the hillsides and along the creek bottoms. The blossom-scent waffles on the air; a faint, sweet wash into my lungs. I can almost wrap myself in its creamy lace-shawl warmth. Today I am checking the south fence of the horse pasture. After a long, cold winter with snowbanks that buried fences in…
Alive
In a thicket of thorn apple trees, a single tree-twig of a chokecherry tree unfurled its leaves. The first leaves I have seen this spring! They are green and rimmed with red. This little twig-tree, as tall as a medium sized cat, stands proud, there in its little clearing. After the long winter we’ve had in north central Montana, this little twig-tree is a sight for sore eyes, indeed. Winter has ended (I hope), and spring begun all in one day, it seems. Snow banks still hang out in the low places where snow piled up deep. The land looks…