Ask

To begin with, I don’t know bird sounds so much. In Texas, the noisy northern cardinals and mocking mockingbirds that dwell in my garden make up my repertoire. Here in northern New Mexico, as of this moment, I am especially clueless. With the exception of the pair of doves that call home the pine tree outside my second story balcony, a few robins that I’ve noticed this spring, and of course, Raven, I am left just to delight in relative ignorance in nameless song and in the dizzying wings of the hummingbird. For some reason, this morning my ear has caught the low thrumming of insect in chorus with the birds of our neighborhood. All of this delicacy is poised against the background of the busy highway running north and south just above the arroyo that separates the modern pueblo-like dwellings where I live from the commerce and human drama that plays out virtually 24 hours a day. As I wait to start my day, as if it isn’t already started, having brewed coffee, breathed the first cup laced with half ‘n half, I am possible. I will walk, I will climb, I will give, I will ask, and I will wait. Whatever I do, it changes everything.