In the waning hours of summer and in the newness and damp of autumn, we built a house. We planted a tree. The foundation settled and we painted walls. The front yard wound around grassy clumps, sprouting fresh, surprised weeds and we walked around and around together deciding where lilacs and hydrangeas and trees might settle.
Then…it was a long, deathful winter; desolate and grey and flat with each new morning dawning early and cold. Waking with hot coffee, a book or two and the resolve to see the sunrise, I pursued nothing with any interest. My mind thinned.
And then in April, I looked up and noticed a bird chirping wildly outside my home. He sang out brilliantly and I rose up and I looked for this bird, this feathered fluttering ball perched outside on the thinnest reed, a mere willow wisped branch of the tree we planted when we built the house.
Nestled on the barest edge of eternity, cocking his head on a greening limb, every chirp and warble wiggled the leaves and shook the infant tree as it struggled to sustain the bird’s chubby plump enthusiasm.
The branch stretched, just thick enough to hold him; barely. He sang his heart out as I peeked around the curtain. In time I returned to my book and listened for a while longer. He vanished around 6:20am.
What kept me from him so long as I sat in thin places? I nestled at length in clouds, waiting for a thicker branch to grow; hoping for a thicker branch to grow.
690 Saint Paul 