Nature in feathers and celestial light
~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Seven small birds perch on two wires beyond my window . . . like this: w w w w w w w
They are a choir in matching robes with a chubby little choirmaster, baton at the ready. I’m spying on sparrows, called spatzi around this heavily German-settled town I live in right now. I can’t hear them because my window is shut tight against winter, but they are endlessly interesting, and because of bare trees, they’re on display for a few months.
I watch them like their enemy, the hawk, only I’m not out to devour them, only to be happy for a few minutes watching their gaiety. When I glance away and look back, they’re flitting off, orderly and in sync, typical bird choreography.
They know their ‘hood well and fly with purpose in a straight line to somewhere obviously more important than choir practice, all of them together, all of them of a mind, all of them oblivious to constant watchers like me, happy to spy on their ever interesting lives.
Oh, to be a bird.
That same evening, my daughter and I watch the harvest moon in full bloom for about two hours. Mesmerized and comforted, we alternate in seeing the friendly face of the Man in the Moon that if we squint becomes the profile of the Rabbit in the Moon. We are being given the gift of a time-out, an escape via nature that nurtures a bit of hope in two souls once again dismayed by politics.
After the sickening news that King Trump stole the president of Venezuela and his wife (killing only 40 Venezuelans, the last I heard), king supporters proclaim a brave and royal decision because President Maduro is an awful man who has made a comfortable life for himself and family screwing his own people.
We know that one, don’t we?
And does this action give rise for some country’s likewise crazed leader to come into the United States and steal Donald and Melania?
Tempting to write about, but it’s not how we’ll get rid of him, we who live by the law except for our greedy leader who is above the law when it comes to himself, which is only one of his hateful behaviors.
Another on display with this theft of humans is his extreme pettiness about Everything — in this case how he disses the woman who could possibly take over the Venezuelan government since winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump, however, in his constantly embarrassing hints about deserving that prize, calls her someone whom no one respects. He’s enough to try the goodwill of every person on the planet.
Watching celestial orbs and neighborhood birds is an enabler for getting on with life, especially when life slams me with one more crazed action of a maddened braggart. These intense minutes of distraction, watching small birds from a second-floor window on a Sunday afternoon that is dimming into night, I wait to be moonstruck by a white orb 239,000 miles away looking bigger than a dinner plate I could touch if I stuck out my hand. I am lucky that I have happily flitting feathered neighbors, a band of airy merriness who before they bed in for the night herald praise of the rising moon.
~~ Despair of human behavior teases me to fall into it, but thank goodness nature pleases me as it calms me right back to hope.
