North Carolina

Bluebirdology

/ Fran Haley / 5 Comments

This spring, a pair of Eastern bluebirds raised a brood in a birdhouse on the back deck. From the windows I watched the whole process. I learned much from my avian teachers.

Bluebirds are curious; they want to know everything, including what humans are doing. When the finch nestlings died a couple months back, necessitating that I dispose of the nest, Mama and Papa Bluebird sat side-by-side on the fence, solemnly watching my every move. Bluebirds are all about family. Their fledglings stick around. When this first brood left the next, the parents became fiercely territorial. They attacked the kitchen bay window and cars in the driveway. No matter how far down the driveway my husband parks, they still take over his car; I even saw the father bluebird killing a worm on top of it one morning, like a mighty hunter on some holy mountain. I wondered if that worm was a meal for his children; the parents continue to feed them for a while after departing the nest.

Lesson One of Bluebirdology: protect your young at all costs.

Mama Bluebird takes over the hummingbird feeder, frequently looking in the kitchen window: What are those humans up to?

Papa Bluebird in all his blue glory, patrolling the fence.

The baby bluebirds are juveniles now, and over the last few weeks I’ve seen three or four them at any given time in the grass or lined up on the fence.

Lesson Two of Bluebirdology: Persevere.

One of the juveniles getting its own breakfast worm: Ta-daa!

What I find most remarkable is how the juveniles help to prepare for the next brood. I watched Papa Bluebird carry new nesting material into the birdhouse; in a moment, here came one of his children with a bit of straw.

Lesson Three of Bluebirdology: Teach your children well; survival is a community effort.

This weekend my seven-year-old granddaughter and I watched Mama Bird sitting on the fence watching us through the window, when out of the blue came Papa Bluebird. He landed beside his mate and fed her an insect in his beak. “They look like they’re kissing!” exclaimed my granddaughter.

They did. It was a sign, for sure…

I suspected, with the recent activity around the birdhouse, that new eggs were on the way. Here’s the thing: That birdhouse has only one little opening where the birds enter and exit. No way to peek in and verify anything or even to clean out a used nest.This is where the plot really thickens: My husband and I are about to embark on much-needed deck repairs. I needed to know: What’s in that birdhouse? If it is an active nest, by law we cannot disturb it. And if there are eggs… well, to me that makes it a sacred place. Not to be desecrated.

And so I bought a little endoscope and ran the wire camera into the birdhouse.

There are four bright blue eggs in a bed of pine straw.

I am not sure when they were laid. It could be a week or two from now before they hatch. Then it will be about three weeks before this next brood fledges and begins to fend for itself (I am imagining a whole army of bluebirds on the offense at that point, with Brood One still in the wings).

The deck repair will have to wait a bit, alas… not sure how I am going to explain this to my husband or our builder but I will take my chances with them over the bluebirds. In honor of life.

Heeding Lesson Four of Bluebirdology: There’s no place like home.

One of the juveniles still hanging around its natal home.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge

Happy Birdday

/ Fran Haley / 7 Comments

Was there a childhood birthday when you woke up excited beyond description for what you hoped that day would bring? It was like that when I turned six. I couldn’t wait for my father to take me to the store where I’d pick out my first pet: a parakeet. I’d begged and begged for one. I was enchanted by birds then, and I am exponentially enchanted now, which is why I woke up so excited last Saturday.

It was to be a day filled with birds…more than I could even count, although I had to try.

Global Big Day, you see.

World Migratory Bird Day, to be more precise, a global celebration occurring on the second Saturdays of May and October. As defined on the WMBD website: World Migratory Bird Day is an annual awareness-raising campaign highlighting the need for the conservation of migratory birds and their habitats. It has a global outreach and is an effective tool to help raise global awareness of the threats faced by migratory birds, their ecological importance, and the need for international cooperation to conserve them.

In the common interest of science, conservation, and celebration, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology invites bird lovers around the world to count all birds seen or heard on Global Big Day and to enter this data in official checklists.

And so I joined Team eBird with my friend and fellow blogger-poet, Kim Johnson. She’s in Georgia, I’m in North Carolina, but we are birds of the same feather in countless ways, equally excited for this bird-counting day.

It began when I woke up to birdsong early Saturday morning. Lately it’s been a mockingbird, which, I’ve learned, is usually a male singing while the female incubates eggs.

This day, however, the dawn singer was a robin.

I threw on my robe and went outside to start my count as the earth swelled with bird chorus.

Here’s what Merlin Sound ID (a Cornell Lab app on my phone) told me I was hearing out front and on my back deck:

There are also some regular bird friends whose voices aren’t in this mix. Back in the house, a fluttering at the window…

My male ruby-throated hummingbird visits periodically throughout the day, and this day was no different; he arrived early and was off in a flash. I added him to my list.

Then there are my eastern bluebirds.

They’re a mated pair which nested in a birdhouse on the deck before Easter, attempting to be as furtive as possible, until the first week of May when they went stark raving territorial. The female flew and flew at the kitchen bay window. Both of them became obsessed with cars in the driveway; one morning I watched the male killing a worm on top of my son’s car. I am still not sure what prompted the sudden change in behavior, but I suspect their babies fledged and flew, resulting in fierce protectiveness of the habitat. All I can say with certainty is that these two birds believe they reign over the kingdom of my yard.

Because they do.

His Majesty

Her Royal Highness, taking over the hummingbird feeder

Never fear, Bluebirds Dear; I added you both to the list. And you don’t know it yet but I bought a “snake” camera to check your nest in the birdhouse, to see what exactly is in there. More on that later…

Other birds awaited on this Global Big Day. Off to the lake I went, in hopes of seeing eagles.

I didn’t see any. But I did see two great blue herons, separately, standing still as statues, as elegiac as poetry, in all their strange and ancient beauty.

They remind me that birds are the last living dinosaurs.

One of the two great blue herons

Over at the dam, a giant nest is protected by government fencing and two fake owls, which don’t seem to bother the two nesting ospreys at all.

One of the two ospreys

After duly noting the ospreys, I made a note to self: Get a good digital camera ASAP. The zoom on the phone can only do so much.

The trip to the lake yielded over thirty species of birds. In addition to those I noted at home, Merlin Sound ID picked up scarlet and summer tanagers, pine warblers, a Swainson’s thrush, Eastern phoebes, brown-headed cowbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, Eastern wood pee-wees, red-bellied woodpeckers and downy woodpeckers, Eastern towhees, chimney swifts, ovenbirds, and the American goldfinch.

Then a huge bird fell straight down from the sky and landed in the brush few feet in front of me.

A red-shouldered hawk. With its beak it grabbed a little snake I’d have never seen otherwise. And then the hawk ran—yes, ran!—into the woods.

I added the hawk to my list as I headed back to the car, exhausted but elated with my bird inventory. I was pretty much done.

But the hawk wasn’t done with me yet.

A little farther down the wooded path, a sudden loud “screaming” of birds— an unmistakable warning of danger, as the hawk sailed by to land on a low pine branch.

I stood as still as I could, videoing that bird for over two minutes while he cocked his head, observing me (does he have a checklist, too?). Smaller birds clamored all around the whole time; some were quite near the hawk, almost like groupies. I couldn’t take my eyes off the hawk long enough to see exactly what the other birds were; Merlin later told me “robins.” Really? I have read that robins are the birds whose warnings make all others take cover but I have never heard them so loud, in such stereo sound. I’d already counted robins, fortunately…then just like that, the hawk took off and the wild screams followed right after him…Elvis has left the building.

Wild.

The red-shouldered hawk, celebrity of the day

Back at home in the evening my family gathered ’round to celebrate my birthday… even more bird-wonder in this day!

Books on birds and birding

Books to share with my granddaughters, ages seven and eighteen months

Finch earrings from my son

I settled down to bed that evening, counting my years, counting my birds, counting the many blessings and love in my life….all in all, the happiest of birddays.

I opened one of the new books, The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human, to read the opening sentence:

Imagine what might happen if birds studied us.

Imagine? There’s no need to imagine...

I know without question that they do.

His Majesty, looking in the window

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the weekly Slice of Life story writing challenge
to Kim Johnson, for always inspiring me
to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for its amazing mission
to all who help protect birds

and to birds, for all the awe
and the lessons we need to learn
about tending our Earth

Science poem: Existential Dance

/ Fran Haley / 5 Comments

For Monday’s VerseLove on Ethical ELA, host Brittany Saulnier extended this invitation: “Today, write a poem inspired by science and perhaps, whimsy…The challenge is to ensure the reader can simultaneously glimpse the scientific concept you were inspired by and a universal truth.”

As always, my thoughts turn to nature. It is always teaching; are we heeding its lessons? Nature’s messages don’t come on words but from its own rhythms and coding. I write much of birds. It is said that they are they last living dinosaurs. Maybe even now they are the impetus, in their always-inspirational way, for my digging deep to see what I might find…

Existential Dance

sea and earth
earth and sea
complicated
choreography

streams of movement
building higher
freeform deposits
wetter, drier

life rising, falling
layer on layer
it’s all timing, timing,
the dragon-slayer

everything alive
to remain, must eat
until nothing remains
but remains under feet 

strata with volumes 
lined on a shelf
stories kept secret
unto itself

sea and earth
earth and sea
consolidated
choreography

streams of movement
releasing the store
freeform deposits
washing ashore

when miners come
millennia later
scratching their heads
no translator

for what they’re seeing
drawn from the earth
looking for phosphate
to be stunned by girth

of ancient teeth
from a creature long gone
scientific name:

Megalodon

(meaning “big tooth”)
—what great irony
this turns out to be
last laugh of earth and sea

monster-shark teeth
unearthed in a way
with a side effect:
workers’ tooth decay

everything alive
to remain, must eat
until nothing remains
but remnants…of teeth

sea and earth
earth and sea
conspiratorial
choreography

Carcharocles Megalodon Tooth. 5.4 inches long, 4.4 inches wide.
Excavated from Lee Creek Mine, Aurora, North Carolina, USA.
Public domain.

My grandparents lived on the outskirts of tiny Aurora, North Carolina, home to the largest phosphate mining and chemical plant in the world (miningtechnology.com archive). In the 1970s, prior to the establishment of the Aurora Fossil Museum, “rejects” or unwanted gravel material from mines were scattered on the many dirt roads around the area. As a child I walked in these rejects along the old dirt road by my grandparents’ home, finding bits of coral skeleton, shark’s teeth, possibly some Megalodon teeth, and fossilized eardrums and vertebrae of log-extinct creatures. Now visitors can dig through this material in the fossil pits at the Museum, which will host its annual Fossil Festival May 26-29.

The April 2023 edition of Our State Magazine contains an article by Katie Schanze about Aurora and its fossils: the area “produces the most prolific fossil record of Miocene (2.3 million to 5.3 million years ago) and Pliocene (5.3 million to 2.6 million years ago) marine life on the Atlantic coast.”

It was by chance that I stumbled across references elsewhere stating that one of the detrimental effects of phosphate mining is tooth decay from prolonged exposure to fumes of chemicals used in the process. What irony, I thought, tooth decay caused by mining something used as fertilizer to grow food, while simultaneously finding preserved teeth of one of the mightiest sea predators ever to have lived…which likely went extinct due to loss of food.

*******

with thanks to Brittany Saulnier for the poetic inspiration on Ethical ELA
and to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge
and Our State: Celebrating North Carolina, Vol. 90, No. 11

Ode to menthol

/ Fran Haley / 16 Comments

In the season
of sickness,
of a rattling
in the chest
that lingers
and lingers
and lingers
I seek
your healing power
O my elixir

none other will do
as well as you

your name
is not always recorded
on cryptic inscriptions

but I know
it’s you

nothing else
has that
distinctive
burn

Alas, you have become
such an elusive elixir

I search high and low
(on the shelves)
just to find
you’ve vanished

leaving no trace

it befits you,
vaporous thing
that you are

I cannot entertain
the notion
of orange
or honey
—fie!

These cannot
open passages
like you.

I wonder
what on Earth
I shall do

but wait…

memory stirs
like ghosts
like tendrils
like vapors, yes…

my own father
pouring your
precious substance
into a little silver tray
and plugging in
the vaporizer

there I was
suffering child
surrounded
by a steamy cloud
tinged with your
cool fragrance

sputtering
sizzling
on through the
long, long night

(you’re no cure-all
for childhood asthma, btw
but I’m not dealing
with that
anymore)

and speaking
of clouds…

back there
in the shroud
of Time
where sits
my father
and
my mother
puffing
puffing
puffing
on Salem cigarettes
there, the
telltale green carton
indicates your presence

I can still smell you
on the foil
of those packs
and in the
smoke ribbons
curling in the air
(aside: salem means
peaceful
complete
safe
perfect)

—what a cool operator
you are,
alternately healing
and stealing
breath

but then…

far back
so far back
I find you
at your purest,
perhaps

sick child
that I was
struggling
to breathe
(yeah, it’s a theme)

my grandfather
going to
his medicine cabinet
for a little
cobalt-blue tub
my grandmother
unscrewing the
aqua lid
and with one finger
slathering a good dollop
under my nose

(which now
no one is
ever
ever
ever
supposed to do
although clearly
I am alive)

and it is this memory
these moments
that are salve to my soul.
balm to my spirit

and so I come
to find you
like a miracle
in my own
medicine cabinet

whereupon I slather
my own self
up good

relishing your
mint-oil fire

your vapors
like a blanket
of love
enveloping me

breathing
breathing
Yea, with
a little
more ease

until this
lingering
lingering
rattle

evaporates
at last…

O, my elixir.



Fun facts: Vick’s VapoRub was invented in 1894 in the North Carolina county next to where I live now. It was originally called Vick’s Magic Croup Salve. From the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: “The salve in the blue jar is made of menthol, camphor, oil of eucalyptus and several other oils, blended in a base of petroleum jelly.” The creator invented it to cure his son of severe croup…which it did. Spanish flu killed the inventor in 1919 but, paradoxically, that pandemic drastically increased demand for his product. Oh…and guess who worked at the inventor’s drugstore as a teenager? O. Henry.

My ode, however is to menthol, not just Vick’s, seeing as I had to include my parents’ Salem menthols in the mix. I was an asthmatic child, my first attack occurring at age three months. As I grew, I often begged to stay with my grandparents when I was sick; they slathered me with this old remedy, hence my great affinity for VapoRub. Accordingly, my grandparents are ever-present in the healing power of that clean menthol burn…nowadays I am not troubled with asthma but when I feel a cold coming on, or, as in the present moment, trying to shake the rattling cough after a cold, Vick’s DayQuil with VapoCool is my go-to. It works, to which widely empty shelves attest. I finally had some delivered by Instacart (had to show ID, of course) so I can continue burning the rattle out of my chest…it’s the best thing I know of, outside of a certain homemade “recipe” made by one of my old-time church members from the country…not exactly sure what was in THAT jar, but it would’ve surely burned this stuff out long before now… that, however, is another story for another day.

Here’s to the healing power of menthol.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge
and to Kim Johnson,
whose series on Epsom salts convinced me that I really, really should write about menthol
(which, yes, can occasionally be dangerous, so use with care)

March snow

/ Fran Haley / 18 Comments

haiku story

gray Sunday morning
in spite of springing forward
it begins to snow

first time all winter
big white flakes now descending
on riotous blooms

purple-pink redbuds
bright yellow forsythia
pollen-laden pines

suspend certainty
while birds rush in, unafraid
of crystallized grass

momentarily
melting away in soft earth
—seems a sheer delight

to countless robins
hopping with newfound vigor
and the cardinal

on a blood-red blaze
toward the bare crape myrtle
where his mate awaits

and dark-eyed juncos
living up to their nickname
ground-flitting snowbirds

while papa house finch
forages in the clover
on the old dog’s grave

for seeds he’ll carry
to mama finch on the nest
incubating eggs

bluebird on the gate
ruffles his blue-flame feathers
in exultation

two crows come and go
strangely silent, for they know
the benediction

Carolina wren
hidden somewhere in the pines
sings Holy Holy

the earth’s aflutter
with myriad wings and things
returning blessing

in spite of the snow
life springs forward, brightening
gray Sunday morning

2020-0417_CentreCoPA_WestMain_Eastern Bluebird in the snow -01. amOBX. CC BY-NC 2.0.

*******

with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the monthlong Slice of Life Story Challenge






Skitterings

/ Fran Haley / 2 Comments

Winter morning, below freezing, ground covered with thick layer of frost like unto snow. Oyster-gray sky streaked with clouds aflame with sunrise. Breathtaking colors. I drive to work, looking for magisterial hawks perched on power lines. None to be seen. At the corner where the patch of woods has been cleared, old tobacco barns are melting into the stubble, overlaid with a thin veneer of crystal. So beautiful, I say aloud. Something pure remains in the devastation. I cannot think of what. I drive on, pondering destruction and human hunger for it.

In the new rose-light little birds skitter up from the wood-edged fields. What type of birds they are, I cannot determine, just upward movement and wings. A strange line plays in my head: This day your life will be required of you. I suppose it’s born of constant murder in the news and too much reading, this very morning the strange coincidence of Diana, Princess of Wales, attending the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco, who died from injuries sustained in a car crash. Did the struggling Diana sense any foreshadowing?

Why am I even thinking of these things during such a glorious dawn?

A shape swoops from the right, directly in the path of my car…surely a bird. I hear no thunk. I see no skittering escape in my rearview mirror.

The bird—if in fact it was—must be caught in the grille of my car. This happened once, long ago, when I was driving a different vehicle: I discovered a dead cardinal hanging partway under the car. Why, why do they fly so low?

I will have to stop and check. There’s nowhere to pull over on these winding backroads frequented by too-fast drivers and farm equipment.

There’s a tiny church tucked in the woods up ahead, past the intersection. Steep driveway, deserted area, but I have to get out and look.

Nothing ensnared on the wide chrome grille of my old car. Beneath the grille, however, are unscreened compartments and there, on the dark, recessed shelf, is a bird.

Alive and moving around. Gray, orange, and cloud-white, like the morning.

Oh, bird.

I take off my heavy black cardigan, wrap it around my hands, and reach in.

Gently, gently… then a soft, warm weight is in my sweatered hands. I make sure to cover its wings to avoid panicked and possibly injurious flapping. Its head is gray. Small gray beak opens and closes without a sound. Its eye, turned toward me, has a faint purplish hue, slightly reminiscent of my pet parakeet when I was six. The gray back and pale-orange coloring on the breast had me thinking robin, but now I can see it’s not. I don’t know what kind of bird this is.

Oh, little bird. I am sorry. As if my speaking will help, somehow.

I cannot stand here gawking at it. The creature has survived the trauma of my car; I don’t want it to die from terror of me.

I think of being in the hands of God.

Please don’t let it die, I pray. Is this a selfish prayer? I don’t know how badly the bird is damaged.

And what am I going to do with it now.

The woods…I skim for a sheltered spot. I step in the leaves and a sudden sound startles me: a rabbit goes skittering away, its big white cottontail bobbing against the sepia scenery. I had no idea it was there. What else is here that I cannot see—? I am shivering. I find a small ridge of leaves and pine straw by a bit of barren brush and there I lay the bird.

The bird turns itself from side to breast, facedown. There’s a bit of white edging on its tail feathers. I wish for to something cover it. The morning is so cold. My sweater might entangle its legs; scraping pine straw over it might alarm it.

I will go. I will not stay to see the outcome. It will recover, or it won’t. I recall the woodpecker that flew smack into the glass wall of the school where I work; it landed on its back in the flowerbed mulch and lay so still I was sure its neck was broken. Within a moment, it managed to flip itself right side up, ruffled its feathers, and flew off—zip!—as if nothing had happened. The robin I extricated from the grille of my sister-in-law’s car, having traveled miles down the interstate at 70+ mph, hopped around my backyard for a day before it flew away. Birds are hardier than they look…at least robins and woodpeckers are.

Still.

Should this pretty little bird die or recoup…it will be in its own natural setting.

In the hands of God. Not a sparrow will fall to the ground apart from the Father...

It is hard, yes, to leave it there and walk away. But I have done so before. With people whom I loved very much.

It is Yours.

Back in the car, I circle the tiny church named for St. John, heading on toward crystal-coated fields and misty-mirror ponds and the work that lies ahead. The little bird will never know that I will remember it, that it’s now part of me, stuck to my soul as long as I live. I know it and that is enough on this cold, fiery-sky morning, orange and gray, breathtaking glory tinged with, but not diminished by, loss.

“If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” —Psalm 139:9-10 (my favorite of the Psalms). This is the view leaving my neighborhood.

As best I can determine: My unexpected passenger was a female eastern bluebird.

DSC_3019e eastern bluebird–female. jjjj56cp. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

*UPDATE, May 2023:

I’ve used the Picture Bird ID app to identify my mystery bird as a female Eastern Towhee.

Eastern Towhee.

Mystery prompts…

/ Fran Haley / 5 Comments

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, Exploring mysteries, here’s a list of questions that have magically appeared in my supposed-to-be-empty WordPress blog posts this month:

What is one thing that you would change about myself?

What are five things you’re good at?

Do you have a favorite place you’ve visited? Where is it?

What big events have taken place in your life over the last year?

What could you do less of?

Have you ever performed on stage or given a speech?

Tell about your first day at something—school, work, as a parent, etc.

What skills or lessons have you learned recently?

Is your life today where you pictured it a year ago?

All you writer-friends out there know the power of a good prompt for overcoming writer’s block, for reaching far and deep, tapping into memory and emotion. Writing itself is a release. It is healing. Perhaps even preventive medicine. Writing is a unique means of expression, of thinking, of creativity, of craftsmanship. It is a singular key for unlocking many mysteries, the greatest of all being yourself.

When gifts are offered, take them…they’re meant for your benefit, enjoyment, edification. The WordPress elves at work behind the scenes here clearly know this. These prompts are likely meant to be answered one by one (I have written to two: one thing I would change about myself and what skills I’ve learned recently) but today I wonder if I could tie them all into one reflection. For better or worse, here goes…

It is said that change is constant. I am constantly changing, growing older, a little slower. I would not change this. It is the price of having been alive a while. I’m willing to pay it. What one thing would I change about myself? My answer now would be different than it would have been years ago. I might have chosen something superficial, having to do with my appearance. Now I am much more concerned with my spirit. How do I narrow what I’d change to just one thing? I should choose to be more gracious, patient, forgiving, even loving…but as I write, the word listen blankets everything else that comes to mind. I would listen to others more. Not with my ears. With my soul. To hear what lies behind their words, their actions. Words are a thing I’m good with, usually. Were I to comprise a list of five things I’m good at, words are linked to at least half of it: I’m good at reading, writing (so I’m told…I do love it and work at it), imagining, wondering, and drinking coffee. In a way these are the five pillars of my daily life, the things I enjoy most, next to time spent with my family. When my boys were small my grandmothers told me that I was a good mother. Their simple proclamation, a revelation of their great esteem for motherhood, felt like the bestowment of a royal title. My boys have the final say, however. Children know all their parents’ flaws, eventually. What matters is that they know how much they are loved and that they learn to love. It is the beginning of belonging. It is why, when asked if I have a favorite place, I’m always going to talk about my grandparents’ home deep in the countryside, along an old dirt road (it’s gravel now). I haven’t been since the house has been torn down and a new one built for a young family. While I dread going because of that, another part of me desperately longs to go…to walk the old road once more, to remember being a child, hearing my grandmother’s old, old stories and my grandfather’s raspy, warm I love you when he offered his clean-shaven cheek to me for a goodnight kiss… again, listen. I imagine sensing them near even if all I hear is the breeze rustling the Spanish moss which wasn’t there, hanging there from the treetops, when I was a child. Once upon a time, though, there were little bridges along the road, due to the many canals…I don’t know what became of those bridges. But the tiny church at the crossroads remains, where my grandparents are buried with generations of my ancestors. One day soon, I must go. I carry them all and their stories with me… I am their story, the continuation of it, as my granddaughters are mine. They are the greatest event of my life in the last three years, one coming into our family at age three and the other born just over a year ago. They are the big event of my every day. I can almost hear Grandma chuckling…now you understand. Listen, listen. Carve time away from the clamor of the world to be still…to minimize distractions, to be fully present when another human is speaking to me, especially my young ones, especially my quiet son with the musical gifts and beautiful singing voice. So many layers there. Listen. I need to be less concerned with work; it is my livelihood, not my life. The family is my life. My pastor-husband, my pastor-son and his girls, The Boy and his music and funeral ministry, all our dogs, the church, the faith, the Lord God, Giver of all good gifts, including life, are my life. How perfect are His ways. Long ago when I was performing in plays and traveling to audition for acting school in New York, I could not have dreamed it would lead me to where I am now, that at nineteen I’d meet the man I’d marry through community theater. The title of that play: Whose Life Is It Anyway? Not just mine. Ours. It was ordained. I had an inkling of it, that first day after we were married, when we stood in the crashing ocean waves and I held onto my new gold wedding band for dear life, for fear of losing it. I knew salt isn’t good for jewelry. I just couldn’t bring myself to remove the ring. New beginnings are so fragile at first. As are new ideas. All these years into our journey, we still look for the new even within the old: we are going to learn how to use that Dobsonian telescope I got us for Christmas. We shall soon be wandering among the stars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, all extending their glittering invitation every cold, cold night. I just learned I wasn’t using the finderscope properly. How poetic. Metaphorical. That’s what writing is for me… a finderscope. Through it I see the memories, the gratitude, the loves of my life…the light from years past, still meeting me right where I am today; I would not change a thing about that.

*******

with thanks to WordPress for the magical prompts and to Two Writing Teachers for the story-sharing place.

Happy holidays to all.

Autumn wings haiku

/ Fran Haley / Leave a comment

Familiar cheeping
at dusk, out on the front porch
-can it really be?

Opening the door
a fluttering of feathered wings
-the finches remain?

Should I be so blessed?
I shall need to buy some seed
for the frost has come.

House Finch with Goldfinch. beaucon. CC BY-NC 2.0.

House finches are regular nesters in my front door wreath from Eastertime through the summer; I have not been aware of their remaining so close by in the autumn months. They aren’t nesting now and as yet I haven’t ascertained where exactly they’re living, only that it’s somewhere near the porch. I see them fly when we pull up in the driveway, and when we open the front door. I can’t even get a good look at them; they’re being evasive.

Their presence lifts my spirit immeasurably: Take heart, be of good cheer, we are still here… the fluttering of wings was so near my face when I opened the door in the dark after hearing the familiar bird voice. It wasn’t alarming. Out in the yawning chasm of night flew the little bird, with my soul tethered to it by inexplicable hope.