Meditative Prose
Tuesday, 3 June 2008
Photo by Saveena
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal — that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself.
– Henry Thoreau
When I eat lunch during the week, I like to get out of the bookstore and away from people. Yesterday I was sitting in one of my favorite spots on campus, a long bench shaded by two big red pines, and I heard an incredible bird. It would sing one type of song, repeat it once or twice, then sing something completely different — again and again, never duplicating any one type of song. One song sounded like a phone ringing! I spotted the bird about 100 feet away at the top of a tall tree, but couldn’t get a good look at it. I didn’t have my field guide with me, but I wanted to note its markings and see if I could identify it later. Several times I saw the bird fly away and land on another high perch, but even with my glasses my eyes are bad, and I could only tell that it was vaguely darkish with a white belly. I resigned myself to not knowing what it was and went back to twirling my spaghetti.
A few minutes later, it flew right by my head and landed on a handrail about ten feet away. For at least twenty seconds, it looked around without singing and rotated on the handrail so I could see it from every angle — the black bars on its wings and the white outer feathers of its long tail — and then took off for good. I can’t help but feel like it noticed my interest and decided to display itself to me once before it left. I went back to work feeling blessed. When I got home I identified the bird as a northern mockingbird — probably a common sight to the experienced birder, but a real treat for me.
This entry is dedicated to Will and Nick, who drove up from Pennsylvania to visit Sarah and me a few weeks ago. That one short weekend put a lot of things in perspective for me.
