It's much easier

for me to be critical, not so easy to be grateful. I'm trying, that's the important part.


Aimless Love

This morning as I walked along the lakeshore,
I fell in love with a wren
and later in the day with a mouse
the cat had dropped under the dining room table.

In the shadows of an autumn evening,
I fell for a seamstress
still at her machine in the tailor’s window,
and later for a bowl of broth,
steam rising like smoke from a naval battle.

This is the best kind of love, I thought,
without recompense, without gifts,
or unkind words, without suspicion,
or silence on the telephone.

The love of the chestnut,
the jazz cap and one hand on the wheel.

No lust, no slam of the door –
the love of the miniature orange tree,
the clean white shirt, the hot evening shower,
the highway that cuts across Florida.

No waiting, no huffiness, or rancor –
just a twinge every now and then

for the wren who had built her nest
on a low branch overhanging the water
and for the dead mouse,
still dressed in its light brown suit.

But my heart is always propped up
in a field on its tripod,
ready for the next arrow.

After I carried the mouse by the tail
to a pile of leaves in the woods,
I found myself standing at the bathroom sink
gazing down affectionately at the soap,

so patient and soluble,
so at home in its pale green soap dish.
I could feel myself falling again
as I felt its turning in my wet hands
and caught the scent of lavender and stone.

- Billy Collins

Chipmunks & Eggs

Sunday morning--ahh. I love my days off. It's 11:30, early by Sunday morning's standards. So what's for breakfast? EGGS!



Several blogs back I wrote about going to visit Linda, who had just gotten some chicks. Well, her older hens are now a'layin, and their eggs are beautiful! I especially like the green Araucana eggs. They're purty. The chicks have grown, too, but they're not laying yet.



In addition to organic feed, Linda feeds her chickens all the scraps from the leftover organic produce we sell at New Life. It makes me feel good to know exactly where my food comes from and know that the animals that provided it are loved and cared for. Eggs from happy chickens make damn good omelets!


YUM.

But after breakfast, what to do? I'll probably stay inside most of the day, since it's gonna' be a scorcher like usual. (Maybe I'll do a rain dance. We need some monsoon action.) The only place to escape the heat of the Tucson summer is inside a movie theater or up on Mt. Lemmon. Nate and I drove up to Summerhaven with my brother Christopher the other day. On the way up the mountain we stopped at Rose Lake, where we encountered about 50 of these little guys:



I think that they're Alpine or Colorado chipmunks, I'm not sure which. They were bouncing all over everything and fighting with the Acorn Woodpeckers and Scrub Jays. So cute! We threw pebbles to get them to come closer--they were pretty tame. I think the people who go to the lake to fish have fed them one too many Cheetos.