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Still Surviving
I had been complaining about the lack of birds in general and specifically those not visiting the Mulberry tree over along the side of the house when a response to my complaint came to me--this was 5-20something, 2001, the weather perfectly cool, crisp, and sunny--in the form of a female cardinal. I was lounging on the side porch with my friend and ubiquitous helpmate, the ice cold budweiser. The Mulberry tree I could almost touch.
The female cardinal drab as they are was soon joined by the vibrant male and I'm being very, very still even at the risk of letting my beer go warm. I was so happy to exist at that moment enjoying what promised but did not turn out to be a love story. I did however get a real nice unmagnified view from about five feet away of the bright red male munching the few remaining berries with his black beak. Two weeks previous I had been begging the gods for more berry-eating birds and now this--a male and female cardinal; St. Louis; Jim Louis. Could it mean something, something good? Should I be embarrassed to reach so far in my mental meanderings?
The mosquito with his frail hypodermic sucking the blood from my left cheekbone made me move and the cardinals did flee. When I reoriented my field of vision to include the world at large I was shocked to see the still surviving feral black and white kitten two feet below me on that little incomplete strip of concrete, doing the scratching backflips--to the left, then to the right, then to the left, a bit awkward and unpracticed. When I went for my budweiser on the step below me and towards the kitten, it became aware of me as if I had previously not existed, and I had to wonder is such a thing possible? To exist and not exist in blinking fashion?
The kitten bolted away from me and all the risk I represent, true to it's surviving nature.