I’ve been watching birds at the feeder for weeks, enjoying their foraging and flight, looking forward to their returning which has become a regular thing with winter setting in. I have books and apps that will tell me anything I could want to know about these – and all- birds. But I don’t look. I don’t research. I don’t analyze. For once, the life I see with the frolic and the feeding is enough without answers.

Some days when the grey is heavy
and the moon does not rise,
we take the path slowly,
watching deer cross the forest
at dusk, listening to rain
fall on the moss below.
With a push through leaves
we can taste, we move together
northerly, with the wind in the hills.

Weeks, months, years of driving by
stationary horses, content
to eat their oats and pick at the ground
with an occasional stare at the horizon
beyond their fences.
But today,
running horses,
one after another as I drove by,
and they didn’t seem to notice
much except their own circle paths,
running, running, through mud
and December as if one day
was much the same as the next.

The drive was colored blue,
a sort of blur of darkening sky
as I hurtled from one place
to another, just as small as ever.
For a moment, I was lifted
by a song, but that ended
-as most things do, so I drove on
in a quiet blur, feeling a little
lost along the stars just beginning
to show through the twilight.
I think it’s almost Christmas.

The tallies don’t quite add up.
I’ve given what I could.
Struggled. Will probably always struggle.
Because I don’t know how to be content
for long. I’ve stretched. I’ve held back.
I’ve rarely faked it. But I’ve exaggerated.
Somehow the totals seem to be heavy
on the blessings I’ve been given.
Too many. It almost hurts to face them
sometimes. Because I’m not worthy
of the sun let alone the moon.
But I take them just the same, greedy for light.