Babies

We are in the thick of babies.

Four legged ones,
from whom no planting is safe,
dart through the fences, 

tiny bodies zipping through the two-inch
mesh that keeps larger mammals
at bay.

Beneath the water, legless ones spend

long days feasting on pond algae,

one day to become the toads and
green frogs they already are,
in metamorphic disguise.

The two-legged feathered ones all wear
the same bewildered expression
at the wide world in which they are
learning to make their way.
Juvenile brown thrashers,
carbon copies of their mother,
follow her through the hostas,
foraging in the mulch.
Young mockingbirds, 

restless in the ripening serviceberries,
plead to be fed, surrounded
by unrecognized abundance.

Baby catbirds experimentally preen their new feathers,
following mama's example, 
and newly fledged cardinals, 
adventurous round little bits of grey fluff,
are never where their parents
last left them.

Fledgling robins in the grass.
Infant house wrens in the hanging gourds.
Carolina wrens exploring the barn.

Chickadees peeping in the nesting box, and
barn swallows zig-zagging above us all.

I had asked for more of God.
Enfolded in new life and
the plenty that sustains it,

again I see.
God is everywhere I look.

 

All The Good

 

Waking early,
grumbly,
agitated,
irritated at the dismal quality
of interrupted sleep,
I begrudgingly filled the water buckets, and
reluctantly headed to the barn, 
when the wood thrush's song
stopped me in
my tracks.

He who had not slept,
who had flown who knows how far
through the darkness, 
who had finally set down into these woods
at first light,
was singing.
No sleepy murmuring, he,
but a full-throated song that
pierced my self-pitying doldrums.
"Pay attention!" he nudged.
"Remember all the good!

All the good given,
day in and day out,
to those willing to receive it
into their being.
Soul lifted and 
eyes opened,
I stepped into
the morning made new,
once again.