May you get out ahead of the storm, earlier than usual, to walk the dog.
May you be patient with that frosted black scruffy, she of no voice who stops every 5 feet — sooner if you let her — not because she has to pee, mind you, but because this is her chosen outlet to rail against a timid life — take that everyone, I’m here, I pee on your sidewalk, so there!
May you let her stop as often as she wants because it’s in the stopping you notice a neighbor across the street, rarely seen, on his knees, praying to a birdbath.
May you lose track of him, just briefly, obscured by traffic and huge bloom fans of forsythia, Japanese maple, and dogwood. Meanwhile, may you sniff the emerging delicate-pink petals with deep-pink bud-beads on the Malus Indian Summer, a volunteer on the boundary between two neighbors — one who had chickens & left the empty coop in the front yard, the other who has two chickens who scratch purposefully among an army of tiny lawn flowers standing at attention.
May you see, this day, one chicken pause and shit a goodly amount and realize even chickens need potty breaks and unlike Minnie, this chicken has nothing to prove.
Then, may you see the beatific neighbor again, this time standing under the dome of his maple tree with a long-handled garden fork in his right hand and may you see him as a lone, squat, bow-legged shepherd — albeit in zippered hiking pants and missing a flock.
May you turn around from the walk, sooner than expected, and may you feel the drops sparse and full and welcome, thrown to your face from an unseen aspergillum by an invisible priest.
May you reflect, as you often do, on Judy’s garden, green and full of potential, and anticipate summer bouquets on the handmade wooden stand with its metal money box firmly attached.
May you remember the time we met the reclusive Judy – just once – and told her how much we admired her flowers when we were on an sunset walk and she emerged from behind a forsythia bush with a wheelbarrow full of bird feeders and sheepishly explained she takes them down every night to foil opportunistic bears.
May you chuckle at this remembrance and contrast her version of “time to take down the feeders” with everyone else’s collective understanding, which is to take them down until winter.
Today, may you peer around that forsythia bush – pruned into rounded form – to admire the feeders and the full complement of birds & squirrels taking advantage of her bountiful persistence.
At long last, may you see the elusive oriole atop the orange fruit tacked to the top of a feeder pole. It’s only a moment, but may you see the ink black of its wings and the buttery orange of its belly startle bright against the green and yellow and gray landscape.