A clear and beautiful morning when I’m at my desk, pondering. I’ve set this image as my computer decktop, to keep me attentive to the moment I describe below in a work-in-progress:
“The blurry moment, the blue moment, the morning on the aqua iron bridge over the Rosebud River, just after 7 a.m., the light on the worn hills opposite, magpies loud in the willows, the moment arriving in your mind as clearly formed as anything: this was part of it. This river, its crossings, the light on the hills, and the rough song of the magpies. Keep this safe, keep this sacred.” — from “Ballast”, a work-in-progress
And, taking a break, walking around my house where the wisterias are in full glory, and the bird song is loud and liquid in the quiet morning, I saw that the resident robin had left her nest briefly. So I quickly held a camera over the nest and this is what’s there:
So another blue moment, the small clutch of eggs kept warm by the female’s brood patch, and left briefly, a moment when the echoes are everywhere, in the long notes of robin song (“Like the ground turning green in a spring wind,/like birdsong beginning inside the egg.” — Rumi), old photographs, even the scent of wisteria (“grape popsicles!” was what one of my children decided many years ago), the morning itself an echo, all the mornings I’ve walked out into weather, mostly hopeful, and rarely disappointed.
...Theresa Kishkan 