It's springtime, more or less. Judy's garden is looking good, thanks to all the weeding, planting, fertilizing, pruning, dead-heading, and other mysterious things she does out there. She made me take down our big bird feeder so she could put the furniture on the porch without worrying about cleaning bird shit and seed hulls off the table and chairs. Reluctantly, she agreed to let me keep up the other feeder, the one outside our kitchen window. I won her over by pleading that since it's mating season the birds need nourishment. She bought it.
As if in support of my plea, the sparrows, robins, cardinals, and finches have been fucking their brains out. They're having quick and noisy sex in the trees, on the lawn, in the bushes. I feel like a voyeur when I watch them. All this sexual activity will soon bring nests full of baby birds. That's a joy always, just as the inevitable tragedies -- the squirrels, coons, possums, and hawks raiding the nests and gobbling eggs or chicks -- are shocking and sad. I tell myself, Hey, that's life. But it still makes me heartsick and then I think about my own dead son.
Springtime's like that, I guess. While it promises new beginnings -- those leaves and flowers, those baby birds -- it can bring into sharper focus old sorrows too.
Jeez, this post has turned grim. Blame it on the rain and a string of dark and chilly days. Blame it on the Republicans, the Democrats, the Girl Scouts. Blame it on the Bossa Nova.
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