I am still in this robe, I can’t seem to do anything…. except watch these birds.

Went to wash the dishes and saw them again from the kitchen window through the evergreen branches and I ran again to watch them more closely. A bathful of starlings. All frantically splashing and chasing away each and every bird that comes near them.  A whole bucketful of them in there, with their slightly garish, speckly, sparkly dark markings.  Or all over the lawn like wicked dark glitter, pecking at something in the hard grass.  Spilled all over the garden now as though dropped from the heavens.

Then a starling alone splashing away like the robin before it.  Then a robin comes flying up to the bird bath and in mid-flight the starling pecks it away.  All the scared wary busy little birds flying in and out screeching and squawking and bowing and flying and  sipping and bathing.  I feel crazy watching them.  I feel happy.  I want to run out like a child and play with them.  For all their fighting they seem happy in my garden, they don’t fly away all the time like birds generally do.  Sometimes when I come near to change the water, just sometimes, they stay where they are. One day maybe, if I sit or stand there one day, very quiet, very still they may just say something.