The White-Crowned Sparrow February 3, 2015

Death should not be the first entry for 2015, so I am posting this second.

When I woke to prepare coffee, I spotted a host of sparrows in the shaggy rose bush.  Cradled in its sturdy bifurcations were half-a-dozen sparrows, who seemed unperturbed by my presence.  One by one, they disappeared to the lavender or the rosemary, except the closest, with white cheeks and crest.  I am nearly hopeless in bird identification, but this one was kind enough to look me straight in the eye and wait for me to locate my bird book.

Coffee made and in hand, I then glanced nearby to find a fallen sparrow, killed by flying into the glass panel of my front door.  Was the rose-bush sparrow grieving the loss of his partner?  I folded my hand around the still warm bird and buried her underneath.

Before I go to sleep February 2, 2015

Today was bright and hot.  As I returned to Almost Pi after a painting class in Novato, the sun had just set and the full moon had just risen.  The sky was covered with a puffy honeycomb of small clouds, dark blue-grey on their bottoms and sparkling along their edges by the full moon behind it.  I couldn’t help but pay attention to it, rather than the road, as I drove alongside the Nicasio Reservoir.

It was 10:30 when I turned off the bedroom light, opened the window, and curled under the bed cover.  It seemed the sky had cleared, so I folded sleeping Pogo into my arms and we went out on the deck to look around.  There were deer in the pasture, Orion’s belt overhead, a clear moon to the south and its eerie glow washing over the deck.  In the distance white mist lay low before the Inverness Ridge.  Everything seemed fresh, alive, urgent.  I slid back inside, crawled under the cover, and settled into a cool night of dreams.