There’s good news and ....

Because it is both depressing and irritating these days to try to comment intelligently on either politics or public policy, I’m pleased to report that we’ve recently learned that there’s a small flock of pine siskins visiting the feeder this winter. I confess to not paying much attention and thinking they were goldfinches until a couple of days ago. Cornell’s All About Birds notes the two species can be seen as similar.

some years it’s really hard to tell who’s there

Photo by J. Harrington

The other piece of recent good news is that a person or persons unknown have been using our Little Library [L.L]. I find it really encouraging when folks actually take and leave books instead of just one or the other. I’m only aware of one other L.L. on the routes we regularly travel here in the exurbs which probably says something. Then there’s also the issue that those of us whose reading taste strays far from the best seller list find it challenging to get a hard copy of what we’d like to read through our local public libraries.

Speaking of books and reading, at the moment there are two books I’m looking forward to reading once they’re published this year. In March, Rose McLarney’s Colorfast will be released on the 5th. Later this year, Chris La Tray’s Becoming Little Shell is scheduled for publication on August 20. In the interim, I’m rereading some of Thomas R. Smith’s poetry and Linda Legarde Grover’s latest novel, a song over miskwaa rapids.

All told, things could be much worse and I’m slowly learning to be grateful for what I have instead of being frustrated and aggravated by what’s missing. At least I’m not a pregnant woman in Texas or Tennessee, nor a family in Gaza. If only we had a Congress that understood they’re supposed to earn their pay by solving problems, not making them worse.

I wanted to be surprised.

Jane Hirshfield
1953 – 

To such a request, the world is obliging.

In just the past week, a rotund porcupine,
who seemed equally startled by me.

The man who swallowed a tiny microphone
to record the sounds of his body,
not considering beforehand how he might remove it.

A cabbage and mustard sandwich on marbled bread.

How easily the large spiders were caught with a clear plastic cup
surprised even them.

I don’t know why I was surprised every time love started or ended.
Or why each time a new fossil, Earth-like planet, or war.
Or that no one kept being there when the doorknob had clearly.

What should not have been so surprising:
my error after error, recognized when appearing on the faces of others.

What did not surprise enough:
my daily expectation that anything would continue,
and then that so much did continue, when so much did not.

Small rivulets still flowing downhill when it wasn’t raining.
A sister’s birthday.

Also, the stubborn, courteous persistence.
That even today please means please,
good morning is still understood as good morning,

and that when I wake up,
the window’s distant mountain remains a mountain,
the borrowed city around me is still a city, and standing.

Its alleys and markets, offices of dentists,
drug store, liquor store, Chevron.
Its library that charges—a happy surprise—no fine for overdue books:
Borges, Baldwin, Szymborska, Morrison, Cavafy.

—2018

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