Spring covered up what stood bare months before. Under a moonlit sky, dark circles drape the lawn and driveway like velvet blankets, shadows under the unfurled crepe myrtle and ornamental plum. I whack my head in the night’s shade on a low branch that is heavy with young foliage, and walk out, cursing, to my car.
Layer upon layer, Spring spackles up the landscape where Winter fails to slough. Years pass. The prickly pear cactus has budded and bloomed into an agglomeration of ovals, a colony. Little green pup ears stand atop careworn gray sections, each pup is topped with a flaming yellow flower.
There is some serious primping going on.
Night sounds have multiplied. The mockingbird’s soliloquy rambles like a long ribbon across the tapestry of night music, over the tiny drone of crickets and the clicking of bats. Sometimes the Chuck Will’s Widows interrupt the peace with their harrowing calls, hammering from cavernous throats. White Wing dove keep cooing after hours, still love-drunk.
Day sounds too, they have bustled out of bounds. It’s a denser panorama, a flourishing of things everywhere: the chortling of swallows and Purple Martins, hissing wrens, bossy jays. After a rain, the Cardinal leads the symphony with its intense love song. Focused, the calls are sculpted, intricate and metered like gingerbread on a Victorian cottage. And while most female birds silently acknowledge their mate’s serendades, the female cardinal responds clearly, without upstaging her man.
While she broods, I watch the male gently stuff her mouth with little morsels. I wonder if it’s appealing to her, what he’s brought to the table. Does she even care? Before Chas was born, I requested sushi and beer to be delivered bedside after his arrival. Instead, we shared a bag of cold Egg McMuffins. I guess we get whatever’s available in the wild, or at 5am in the hospital.
…You know, he still could have filled that order later that evening, or the next day, damnit. But I never got the damned dinner I asked for. And that’s where I differ from the cardinal…
….I totally forgot where I was going with this.
Mine was a cold Subway sub sandwich after Will was born. Where is the mystique, the awe, and reverie in childbirth these days? Don’t husbands know what a girl wants? 🙂
I hope your Dad reads this. I am amazed and awed with your understanding of bird culture. I hope Will, Clare and I can someday have the same relationship with nature….(often it’s just the neighbor’s grandchild banging out some inharmounious tune on a harmonica).
I love your art step. It’s so lively. In this one I especially love the blue shadows.