June 4, 2025
A Dream Come True
On the morning of May 27, 2025, my best friend appeared in my dreams. In waking life, my friend was a dog. In dream life, he appeared in the form of a cardinal. In the dream, I wanted to take my friend's picture but he did not want me to; he didn't want to be captured.
On the evening of June 3, 2025, one week later, a male cardinal and a female cardinal appeared on the railing over the two steps outside my porch window that lead to a sidewalk. The hour was past dusk; the sighting surprised me. I watched the companions as they sat side by side on the slight edge. After a moment, I reached for my phone but as I tried to capture them they flew off.
Evidence of the male cardinal can be seen in the resulting photograph. He looks like the memory of a dream.
June 2, 2025
The Best
Is there anything better than the moments before a summer storm?
The winds whip and the birds zip in and out of the lilac (one young cardinal grabs a quick nibble from the seed I use as feed). It's early evening. I had started on a walk and came back. But I didn't go in. Soon but not yet. It's OK that the drops have started to fall. I want to be here for this. I just want to be a witness.
No show that can be found through a screen can come close.
They're There For You
Generally, when I'm alone in bed I don't want to hear any noise. The sound of a car engine on the street, say, is an unwelcome disturbance during those hours.
Yet I never mind the birds. They must have started in at about 5 o'clock this morning. They may not intend this, I will grant you, but it's as if with their early morning chatter they are greeting me. They are greeters. They are greeting me, specifically.
It's as if they say: Welcome to the day.
June 1, 2025
Don't Mind If I Do
I look out the backdoor and see a squirrel friend with his head buried in blades of grass. Something tells me he's soon to go for a drink and, sure enough, I watch him cross the walkway, sit on his hind legs, and sip from the pint-sized pool I poured this morning. There's something moving about seeing small animals, domesticated or otherwise, perform the primal tasks: sleep, eat, drink. These are rare life moments: to see essential needs as they are met with suffering out of view.
May 29, 2025
Friends Who Don't Know It Yet
I see them at least once a week. Maggie and Mabel. We're on similar walking schedules, apparently. Usually, they are on the opposite side of the road. Or they are off ahead of me. This morning we happen to be on the same patch of sidewalk.
I squat. I hold my knuckles out. I want to see if Mabel, the canine end of this lovely lady-dog duo, will draw closer. She looks up from whatever she was sniffing and starts slowly toward me, then — like that — hops back, yanking her leash, causing Maggie to have to hold on tighter. Mabel's not sure about me. Either that or my knuckles need washing.
"She's a little skittish," Maggie says.
"That's OK," I say. "So am I."
As I continue on my loop during a mid-day stroll, I notice my mind's instinct to make something of moments like this one. Scan for meaning. Review for possible revision (as if that were possible). Consider what might be said or done next time. We live a half-dozen blocks away from each other and yet I see them more often than I do neighbors that live on my street. Is the universe showing me something I am too blind to see? If so, what would that be?
I do not indulge these thoughts long. I stop writing the script and instead, later, after I get home, scribble down what did occur. I do not know what will come, if anything does, and it's best to free myself, whenever I can, from the burden of rehearsing the future.
The gift was the moment. In its recollection I receive that gift again.
May 27, 2025
Lord of the Realm
Four stories up in a tree across the street sits a cardinal. A bundle of red life in a sea of yellow-green leaves. His head twists this way and that as he chirp-chirp-chirps royal dictums from the perch of a branch that might as well be a throne.
Is this cardinal the king of the world?
I do not think there is any other plausible conclusion.
May 26, 2025
Giants Among Us
I am so blessed to live near so many trees.
May 25, 2025
Turn That Dang Music Down
It's quite possibly a sign that I'm making the pivot to Geezer City but in this edition of "Smartphones Have Ruined the World: Part 1,222" let's talk about the people who walk (or ride) down the sidewalk with the speaker-phone function turned up full, as though there were no difference between the rest of the world and their living rooms. The latest example to disturb my peace: a sixty-something walked along my sidewalk on this, a Sunday morning, engaged in a conversation that I really didn't want to hear but was forced to despite my windows being closed because if we have a phone — and we have to have a phone — we need always to be using it.
May 24, 2025
Get On My Lawn
A squirrel sits on its hindquarters next to the city tree next to my street. White-breast out, he sits, sits, sits, parallel with the tree trunk, as though he just came on stage. Then he steps all-fours into the street. He scampers across. A foot from the curb, he turns right. He scampers until he reaches the walkway cut into the patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk. He hops over the curb onto the walkway. Here he had scampered in a straight line across the road but instead of continue on this path, onto the grass, he went down to the walkway. Why? My first thought is that we've had some early-spring rains so maybe this agile tree-dwelling, bushy-tailed rodent wished a break from wetness. Yet I was on this grass earlier; the lawn was not dewy. When I walk these same streets, I usually make a point, as I'm crossing from one sidewalk to the next, to step over and around grass so as to remain on the pavement. At some point we collectively decided it was neighborly to avoid other people's lawns. Was this squirrel at that meeting? Was this squirrel upholding this odd etiquette? Jaywalking violation not withstanding, this squirrel appears to be a good pedestrian.