Oddballs
take a better look, and see
A suburban tree in a suburban yard, stripped, by winter, of its leaves. To which an odd bird flocks—fat and feathery, brown and brown-flecked white, impressively billed. An oddball bird, rounded and fluffed on the scratch of a limb, staring at me—another oddball on a Zoom call, which will always be an oddball thing.
Between us: a pane of glass and a rather cheap screen. Dividing us: the strangeness of strangers, the bird’s brown fluff to my cotton turtleneck, the bird’s long beak to my thin lips, the bird’s braving of winter weather and my braving of absolutely nothing, except the Zoom, except my mood, except my unanswered wish for the end of fires and catastrophic hurt and shattering hostilities.
If I stand, the bird will leave. If I rush the window open and call out a name—Bird, Bird—it will not wing itself to me. I cannot, in this moment, breach our divide, but I can wait, and I will wait, and when he flaps off, I will wait more, for someday, perhaps, he will wing back to that scratch of a limb on that most-barren tree, and I will take a longer look, and I will better see.
I have always, from my earliest moments, knew to stay still to watch wildlife. My parents would place me outside with a cracker, then step back inside to watch the chipmunk I had befriended come to me for his treat. As a young child, my favorite book, gifted to me after being discarded from an elementary library, was Listen, Rabbit by Aileen Fisher. The child in this book sent silent wishes to the rabbit, a practice I now realize I still do today. I was finally able to locate a replacement, this one also discarded from an elementary library. I still love it.
Know you lift spirits even while my grandkids had to be evacuated. They are safe and we are "waiting" to see if the Palisade fire reaches their area. The oldest boy's school was saved by Quebec pilots with planes that scoped water from the Encino reservoir and stopped the fire which was very close. They are now in San Francisco where there were earthquakes yesterday....Earth is speaking. Can we hear?