You can Run

But you can't hide. Fall is upon us, calendar or no. The goldenrod is barely in bloom, but the nights are chilly, mornings are sweatshirt cool, and the fog is thick as eggplant sauce. The air rings with the calls of blue jays and black-capped chickadees and the dogs are getting furry.

This week I thought the hummers were gone, wrote mental poetry to their absence, and was saddened by the lack. 

They don't usually leave without saying goodbye at the window but sometimes......

They are the court jesters of the summer porch, always clowning around and squabbling like a litter of puppies. I cleaned the feeders day before yesterday and during the hours that they were down the birds seemed to vanish. The feeders glistened in the sun, the wasps partook, but no crazy little buzz bombs whizzed and zoomed among the geraniums. It troubled me. I am a hater of winter....don't know why I live here in the frozen spaces....and I am in no way ready for anything about it, especially the shrouding of all the windows in dense, dull plastic, cutting me off from out there as surely as death.

Then yesterday noon, just one came back. I willed it to come over close to comfort me one last time......and lo and behold it did! It really did! I wished it would fly over and hover in front of me as they sometimes do and within seconds there it was. 

We contemplated one another for a moment, me in my old red chair, it suspended between beating wings like a feathered pocketbook on a strap or a heavy waisted bumblebee.It was a moment...you know the kind I mean.

It made good and sure that I saw it and knew that it had come because I asked and then was off about its business.

This morning at dawn they were back as if they had never left. I will savor every feather as long as time allows me.