A Morning Tableau
Observing, Meditating, Anthropomorphizing
Life surprised me this week, and I’ve been in a bit of mental and emotional overdrive. It made my quiet Saturday morning all the more necessary. Today’s post is short, just a few captured moments of early solitude. I hope you find a moment like this in your day. Read on below.
The birds are awake before I am, and I guess by the light peeking through my jerry-rigged curtains that it’s in the seven o’clock hour. I wish it would stay out, so I could reclaim a few lost moments of sleep from the night before. Checking my watch, I am grimly satisfied. 7:31. That is sleeping in for me, though I don’t count it because my sleep was hollowed out, the middle chunk missing to sore muscles and pages of reading, and an annoyingly needy stomach. There’s something in there too about thoughts and anticipation, an eager beckoning forth of the new day. But it’s here now, and I am tucked into my armchair, my tea growing lukewarm.
Two crows alight together on neighboring trees, so high up the tops look flimsy. After a moment, one leaves, touching down in a sturdier tree. I think about the one left behind, how it holds on to what must be the most delicate of branches. The wind is almost still this morning. Every now and then, its subtle breath coaxes these giants to sway. Finally, the second crow takes off, and at first it appears to be heading in a new direction, but it changes course, and I am surprised to see it land in the tree where its friend had gone. This tree is much more dense, and it’s impossible to see the first crow, but I wonder if in leaving the first time, it was trying to get away from the other. Is this second crow clinging to the first? Was it lonely on its own? Did it find its friend again, and did that one have to plot a second escape? I lose the crows in the thick branches, but two smaller birds twitter past, and it begins to drizzle.