Every Good Morning

The fields are split by a thick tree line that runs their length. Life fills that line  — deer escaping afternoon sun, groundhogs — nesting birds — cardinals, catbirds, indigo buntings, field sparrows whose song rising in pitch lifts the spirits, and a few days ago Luna put her nose to a turkey fledgling trembling in high grass whose frightened cheeps brought forth its mother who burst from invisibility two feet away with outspread wings and warning chatters and gave the three strangers enough pause for both to escape.

The fields are split by their look. The west is two-plant dominated — Johnson grass and Canadian thistle and here and there the bully size of Bull Thistle. The east is lush with Fleabane, Raspberry bushes, Pokeberry, some Thistle, Daisy, St. John’s Wort, Butter and Eggs, and Red and White clover (which is where the bees hover). Tree swallows skim the surface of all its length.

Yesterday, alone, trying on my ghost threads — walking low, stopping often, carefully moving to lessen noise, avoiding becoming a silhouette, trying to blend my big frame into a lower background — I paused by a patch of thistle and rose hoping to see something — unseen, and from low on their stalks, in a burst that lasted seconds, wonderful seconds, over a hundred goldfinches startled up above and around me and rose like a geometry that keeps to its angle but parts for obstacles, all dots of bright sun-yellow ascending, chipping, warbling, twittering all together as they rushed for the safety of the tree-line from scary me who, so spellbound, could not have lifted a hand.