birds

There's been a pair of grey birds hanging around my garden all season. They are about the size of robins or starlings. The male likes to sit on the wire in the morning and sing. He has a repertoire and virtuosity which would make a mocking bird envious, but he's clearly not a mocking bird, his calls just sound more demure and sincere. His tail plumage don't fit the striped giveaway. They are not cat birds either, none of that plaintive, manipulative whine. I do not know the breed, I am not a birder or that driven to label and name everything that I see as if that can control them.

The very first words of God's to me that I began to recognize and understand were dead birds that He put in my path right as I put a woman under the bus. I think the first one that I noticed was the day that I rejected Holly Morrison, in Estonia. It had not been a conscious choice on my part, I was still not fully awake to her play for me but I rejected it. Looking back later, I realized that I greatly admired her independence and fortitude and the life she was building for herself. She had picked herself up from total disaster in the outskirts of D.C., taken her four kids and her pittance of a SS check from her late husband, and begun to forge a very respectable estate, following, and reputation on the edge of the arctic circle and right under the nose of the great bear. But as for me, though I do eschew my own culture and people, the idea of spending six months in total darkness and deep snow just doesn't, quite, grab me for some reason, and I made a wise choice there.

After that one, there wee several other incidents which impaled themselves upon my consciousness til I recognized that they were not, in fact, mere coincidences but that He was trying to find some way to get my attention. And, as He began to succeed, the single words became a torrent til I began to realize that hardly anyone ever listens to what He has to say, anymore, and He gets pretty lonely sometimes. I know, there are quite a lot of folk who preach loudly about the word of the Lord but they are pretty much preoccupied trying to get themselves heard to bother to actually listen to Him.

About two weeks ago, I ran across a fledgeling sprawled underneath my Impatience, attracting the flies and the ants. It had chosen to die over the spot where my latest apprentice had helped me to annihilate the large mulberry stump which had hitherto been refusing to recuse itself from my flower garden. I was beginning to become quite fond of my budding apprentice, but suspected that for amorous activities she preferred someone younger, a whole lot stronger and active, and rather darker in pallor, so I refrained from making any advances, though the work we did together was quite physical and close. Sure enough, she called the next day to say she was being evicted and would get back in touch with me when she got her feet settled again, and has since dropped off the face of the earth.

However. The point that I am getting around to is that the apparent parents, those two grey warblers overseeing my paltry horticulture, well, they carry on. They continue to feed themselves upon the pests attracted by the fruits of my labor, they continue to flit about hither and yon, and most importantly, they continue to greet the dawn with their joy and abandoned notes.

As, though it may not always sound so joyful to the untrained ear, do I.