May 26

It is morning. Last night’s storm still lingers. Sky is soft blue with puffs of white clouds and bruised yellow. Air is cool and heavy with rain. I step into it thinking of flying. Before I knew I wouldn’t be attending the Pittsburgh Festival of Books, I thought today would be a day for leaving. I knew what suitcase I was going to bring and planned to dress it in my Remembered book cover suitcase cover. I had no idea what would be inside. What do you wear on your first trip back to Pennsylvania in twelve years? What do you wear for the first time reading from your first book at your first US festival? I never did plan that outfit.

And today, because and because and because, I am not traveling today and instead of one of leaving, today is a day of being home.

The potted garden is plump, soil rich and wet and full with rain. Not all of the pots are as I left them. Not all of the dirt is either. Some of the pots are tipped over onto the patio. Two are huddled together. Two have deep nose or paw prints as if something or someone was trying to get into the pot. Or, as if something or someone was trying to get out of the pot. I leave the dirt as I find it. Fix the potted plants and potted trees.

At the café, the water bowl is nearly empty and the food bowl is too. Both look wind swept and battered though they are both where I remember them to have been. I am filling the food bowl with seeds and nuts and nuts and nuts when I remember that I have left the bag of sunflower seeds and the apples inside the house. Nearby trees are filled with Sparrow, Blackbird, Martin, Wren, Robin, Song Thrush, Crow, Starling, and Moorhen. A Moorhen in Dewsbury Moor! There’s chirping, cawing, cooing, clicking, whistling, honking, and flapping, flapping, flapping. It feels like a miracle. It is not the morning I expected to have. But, it’s certainly the feeling I need.

I place peanuts in the nest no one uses. I imagine Squirrel running around and around and around the short tree trunk, gathering a peanut and running around and around and around back down. Or, Jay though I have not seen Jay in months, soaring and swooping and then diving. I could wonder all day. But the flapping is going closer and more frequent and I have been standing still for at least one honk already. I put away my things, and slip into the house.

Not long after, I am standing in front of the sink in front of the window when Magpie flies right into the nest. Not inside the wide open waiting hole. But, into it. The straw nest bounces this way and that. Should I turn the nest so the hole is facing another way? Should I help? It is ungraceful and unbeautiful and thankfully over quick. I do not have time to help and I do not know what help would have looked like. Later still, Magpie is on top of the nest pecking at its woven straw. The nest twirls in response. There are still peanuts inside. Magpie twirls on top of it. This time, I take a picture. Before it even snaps, Magpie is already gone.