Greeting a New Day

Thoughts seem to drip from the pen, the hand, the downhill gravity pulls and sluffs off from the brain. Keeping the pressure normal, bearable, something close to hospitable. These drippings pulling thoughts bring in more, sort of like leaves when they open their stomata to release water only to pull more from the roots. But they know how to fight gravity while I am its slave, I still try to learn everything I can from trees.

A lone indigo bunting joins me in this wolf of a great northern red oak. I sit atop the canopy, close to 60 feet tall, and the birds don’t seem to mind me up here. They feel safe when I’m on their level, and I haven’t tried to sing as we both greet the morning sun, I leave that for the professionals. But we both face it proudly, soaking up the warmth and the light. It feels good to his hollow bones and my aching body. We look at each other, I admire his seemingly phosphorescent iridescent glow of indigo with black highlights, and perhaps he finds a strand of curiosity, or at least acceptance, of a strange species out of its element.

Either way we are comrades today as the shadows shrink, the dew disappears, and the forest becomes louder with life and sound. A bird sings because it knows how to, we search for happiness and fulfillment because commercials tell us we can find it, if we know where to look, or the proper way to shop. A spider begins making a web from the button on my shirt to a branch. I begin to feel like the tree, wondering if I smell enough to draw bugs and that’s the reason, though I know its silly and far from reality. It’s web grows, this operation getting to the point I’d hate to move and destroy all it’s progress. I am stuck until the spider captures breakfast, and slowly I find out I don’t mind. There are tons of worse places and scenarios to be stuck in compared to sitting atop a big tree with an indigo while a spider uses you for structural support.

I can feel the tree sway from up here, gradual flexible rocking that is so key to malleable yet solid strength. We have to learn how to bend and how to sway to get through these days. The tree has leafed out and I but a dot, another percher blending into the canopy. A blue jay flutters by with a twig in his mouth, hoping it worthy of his potential mate as he disappears with his gift into the canopy of the next tree over. A pileated rattles a trunk in rapid drumbeat calling out for a partner. I watch the indigo preen himself, zipping up his feathers for efficiency, twisting his head and running a row of keratine made feathers through his beak, singing in between each rake seeming to get more and more excited about being all zipped up and ready for some real flying. Looking sharp, and I start to notice his head a much richer and deeper color, almost purple.

An alarm call and all goes silent. I look up and see a small hawk coming near, circling the vicinity with swooping arcs spiraling and spiraling, not too unlike the spider. The hawk keeps moving on after a minute and slowly the songs fade back in.

The thrush joins in, serenading us with its crisp flute like song, reminding everyone who has the sweetest song of them all. They are all sweet, but the thrush has a special place in my heart and I smile frequently while they sing variants with fluidity like a skilled jazz musician.

The songs surrounding me louden and harden and change and grow to a moving morning aubade. I close my eyes, accept my morning fate, and let these thoughts drop out my pores to the atmosphere, the aether, breathing offbeat with the tree, both of us digging deep in our roots as the essence of life flows through.