We count by threes and twos these days
Alternating who cooks enough food to last
Three days for us two eating leftovers
Savoring our favorite home cooked meals.
We are living a fantasy life for now
Like what you might daydream about
When you will take it easy after you retire
Every day doing what you want to do.
For us that means being where it is warm
Outside walking the trails in a nature preserve
Discovering the endless diversity of wildlife
Especially the exuberant beauty of birds.
How delightful that feathers evolved before flight
As pure decoration designed to dazzle a mate
Before natural selection found a new use for the loveliness
Producing birds soaring and swooping to display their art.
Here it is early spring with the trees leafing out
The time for courtship and coupling for us to observe
Our favorite time of year enjoyed twice
Repeated when we move back north next month.
Sometimes I notice my age seeing my skin
Loose on my arm slackening in the way of all flesh
Knowing too well that everything is temporary
Then I lose myself in experiencing today.
Watching the ospreys incubate their eggs
In the neighborhood park across the street
Where the trumpeter swan dropped in last week
Out of nowhere not seen anywhere else around here.
Watching the night herons build nests in the laurel oak
Yellow crowns glowing in the afternoon sun
Strutting almost within reach of us on the boardwalk
Flaring feathers in the nature preserve down the street.
Watching a roseate spoonbill arrive overhead
Flying in and circling down to settle for a while
Perched preening in a tree across the pond
Back from the edge of being hunted to extinction.
And seeing the horned owlets about to fledge
And the pileated woodpeckers excavate their nest hole
And all the many species in the aviary we inhabit
Providing us every day awareness of the sweep of life.
