There are some things we need to know, we need to see, we need to feel. I learn by watching, seeking meaning in events beyond my fingertips, within the circle of my vision, what is ruled by that outside of me. Starting simply, seeing millet from the feeder turn to lawn around the pole; finding sunflowers growing in a pot I’ve planted with red and coral geraniums and purple petunias. I help nature reproduce itself and nature then helps me. Here are some astilbe plants I’ve started several years ago. They are pink and crimson, blending well with those much older–fifty years or so, much older–from my father’s mother’s gardens, they are white.
One thing becomes another in the plan in which I dip and dig my fingers in to make a mark somehow. Life changes every season, every day, and cardinals I see are from the eggs laid in the nest within the rhododendron bushes in the early spring. Two young boys, a girl, are taught by feathered mom and dad who still are teaching that the large moving thing is that which fills the feeder, and is trained to answer chirping when the seeds are gone.
We all move together in the mornings. We all sleep in different private places in the nights.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology