I woke from a dream @ nine a.m. to the sound of our alley cats,
the Ugly and the Meanie meowing hungrily. It was raining.
I snoozed a half hour more even though I knew
there was plenty to do.
It would still be there in thirty minutes.
I made coffee and a phone call to a friend to reschedule our meeting,
he obliged to do so
due to
the rain.
I relaxed and readied my paperwork, the one errand I meant to run,
the last of the red tape I needed to cut through. I didn’t want to rush around, so I left early. The line was long, but they have this drop box so I skipped the line.
I was extremely calm, almost tired, riding my bike on the slick asphalt, arriving at work an hour early. I strolled into the locker room, unraveled my rain suit, hung it up to dry, dressed in my uniform, and made a cup of tea. I made quick conversation with the day shift, then decided to go outside and sit on the golf cart under the awning. It was still raining a little, so I adjusted the wind shield, placing the tea in the cup holder, sat down in the cart and began backing up slowly, so as not to spill my tea. The front of the building is all shiny glass windows and doors. Some times birds fly into the windows when they get confused. Today one of the littlest of all the feathered fell victim to the mirrored glass psych-out. A full-grown, green and black humming-bird lay bottoms up on the left of hisself, and I happened to find him first before the ants got to gnawing on him. I picked him up very carefully using a single, soft, white paper towel to drape over his tiny bird body, and sat him up right in my left hand. He was still alive, but paralyzed with fear from shock. I called quietly over the radio for my friends to:
“Quick, come see what I found!”
my little living thing.
We sat there like that for some time, and he started to pull his thing together. He tucked his wings in by his sides first, got fluffy, then stuck out his tongue.
He let me pet him
in back of his head
with my right pointer finger.
He straightened up and flew off, circling overhead once, as if to say thank you very much, and away he went.
