I’m going out to look at the birds and the clouds.
They calm me.
While I’m immersed in them, I can escape thinking about the war that fool just declared for us or about the civilians in Gaza being massacred daily by Bibi’s vengeance machine or about Iranians and Israelis huddling in shelters as their criminal governments bash each other or how the pig Putin continues his effort to hammer Ukraine to bits or about the US secret police sweeping up people from their homes or places of work or about this collection of creeps and cowards who claim the leadership of both Parties.
Let’s shut down that sentence before it achieves its infinite length.
The Jays swoop, the goldfinches loop de loop, the doves flare, the blackbirds do their acrobatics on the pole that holds the feeder, and out in the field among the grass cut yesterday, 2 vultures waddle down rows like an old married couple in Walmart, companionable and silent.
This morning, I took the dog to a preserve to walk. We made the short drive along an old country road and passed a 16- or 17-year-old girl, running fast. I swear she was this close – | | – to proving Newton wrong and rewriting the law of gravity. The sight of her lifted my heart, and for my third or fourth foolish thought of the day, I considered getting out my old sneakers when I got home and setting off at a gallop on my own. I remember that singing, that duet of body and mind and speed.
It is the privilege of peace to watch birds and contemplate 72-year-old benign idiocy. Those innocents who are trying to survive the fires all around them have no such peace. I’ll pray for them, for an end to this suffering and for their relief from the whims of beasts and try very hard not to believe the gesture is ineffectual. Then I’ll go out again and wait for a voice out of the thunder growing louder by the minute or for the fledgling bluebirds and sparrows to fling themselves upon the feeding bench and give me yet another reason to keep faith in beauty and grace.
