A Dance of Light and a Shiver Through

A few years ago we brought home a stained-glass birdbath to hang in the backyard. It’s shallow and about the size of a small dinner plate, and though it has since become somewhat discolored, it’s still pretty with the light shining through it and onto the ivy below. I keep it full and fresh through the warm part of the year, then take it down late in the fall. Whenever I visit, I find several insects that have stopped by for a drink — bees, wasps, the occasional butterfly, and sundry others. We’ve noticed, too, that sometimes when we’re sitting outside in the evening, when the area is deep in the shadows cast by the neighbor’s fir trees, and although we are near, small birds will come for a sip. We’ve yet to see one bathe. They appear to be finches of some kind. We’ve seen them singly and in pairs. There’s a full-sized birdbath on a pedestal a few feet away, nestled in moss, partly crowded by a large rhododendron, and set off by the trunks of two large white birches immediately behind, the kind that produce those beautiful paper scrolls. That bath is favored by robins, which splash up a storm most any time of day, and in almost any kind of weather, even when there is frost on the ground. They too are quite content to have us nearby. Exuberant performers that they are, there are times it seems they almost prefer it.

A Dance of Light and a Shiver Through

A dance of light. Each leaf has something it must whisper to the other leaves and in saying be made whole. A shiver through a gray-green dress. The solemn sense you soon will fall. And what the moon might know as she dreams her dream of clouds.

Recently Banned Literature, June 9, 2017

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