Another Scoop of Seed

My house has a small back porch off the first floor that feels like the second floor, because the house sits on a ledge, and the basement is the first floor from the back. The porch sits at the same height as the garage roof, where great bunches of ivy make a favored spot for birds and squirrels and sometimes, in the late summer, a praying mantis on the hunt. When I first moved here, my wife asked if I could paint the fenced railing and the carved post of that porch in a bright array of rainbow colors, red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and green. We call it the Folly, and it’s where I go, several times a day, to smoke a rolled cigarette and watch all the birds that come to the suet and the seed I scatter. Woodpeckers, nuthatches, and chickadees gather on the porch, as do cardinals, bluejays, juncoes, and sparrows. All those wee beating hearts, all that flutter of feather. Once, there was a grosbeak, and even a shy flicker. My favorite was a carolina wren, so small and so brave and silly even, stabbing whole peanuts with her long sharp beak and struggling off with them, even though there was plenty of more manageable seed on offer. Squirrels visit, too, and so I put out peanuts, and sometimes walnuts for them. Some years, the squirrels get bold and will take the nuts from my hand.

The birds have still been coming in their dozens all winter, hungrier since the cold started in November, and my little wren has been as stubborn and brave as ever. But this year, the squirrels are skittish, and so am I and so many of my dear ones. This week, I’ve been trying to get all my identification documents in order, and trying to manage my consumption of the news, and holding folx close as…well…you know…

I’ve been out on the porch more, trying to keep some sense of equilibrium. Last night, I crashed, too brain fogged, fearful, and furious to get any real work done, again, and when I went upstairs to call it a night, the copper pipe that runs water to my bathroom sink had sprung a pinhole leak, a steady stream of water jetting out and onto the floor. At eleven o’clock. On a Friday night. Plumbers charge twice their usual rate on weekends, and I am no handy-man. I don’t even know which of the dozens of valves in my basement, all installed by previous owners who fancied themselves to be handy-men, is the one that shuts off water to the upstairs. The pipe is only a few inches from the floor, so I put a glass baking dish under it and micky-moused some fast putty around the leak so at least it is going down instead of sideways. That’s not a metaphor.

I may have invited God, loudly, to go suck a f*cking donkey d*ck.

I got up every few hours to empty the baking dish and tried not to catastrophize about the pipe maybe rupturing and flooding. That, too, is not a metaphor. I did my best to meditate and pray and believe that the putty will hold until Monday, when we’ll call the plumber. But mostly, I railed at God. Stupid a**hole.

This morning, the pipes and the putty still held, and although I am sleep deprived, I tried to do the household things that needed doing, and to meet my editing deadlines, and to reach out to folks. I baked cookies, prepared lunch, and I rolled a few smokes. Then I unlocked the door to the Folly. There was still a bit of seed from last night. And, my little wren friend was lying stretched out and still in front of my chair.

Really, God? Really?

But the juncoes and the sparrows, and the titmice and the squirrels were in the ivy, waiting for their morning feed. The bluejays were squawking and the woodpecker was swinging on the suet. All those wee beating hearts and fluttering feathers. So, I put out another scoop of seed and let the sparrows gather fearlessly at my feet.

I really loved that wren, though.