Joy and Melancholy

Amid the chirps of happy birds, or, so it seems to me, and around here, they're happy all the time ... even at night, some of them chirp away ... when do they sleep? In the nature of such a bird, some irrepressible power has to sing. Perhaps I'm too complex a critter to sing like that, though my heart can overflow with heaps of gratitude when I stop to look around and see the stuff at hand. Not everyone can do that, I know. Turn on the news and watch the children of Syria weep, and the anguished faces of mothers at the border cradling their children. No child should have to cry like that, or any mother look like that. When I sing, I know how unusual be my lot in life, compared to the millions who hide in the corners of broken buildings and yet dare to dream of something good for their children, even as they wrap loved ones for burial and cry out against the sky.

A pale blue sky right now, a huge flowering tree, white and pink against that paleness, green trees close by, a flowering plant twisting its arms around and through the deck railing and it's lattice work ... sturdy, rugged, green leaves, and softly bright pink flowers ... shaped like a royal trumpet of some sort, blaring forth a silent song - ta rah, too tottle, or something like that. I wish I could hear the song they trumpet.

And high above, unseen, the drone of a single-engine plane, engine revs rising and falling, and then into a steady beat for awhile ... and now the revs cut low ... gliding, I guess. And who's the pilot? Someone out for the pure joy of it? An instructor with a student? A family headed out to Riverside, or Palm Springs? Maybe even Phoenix? Fly away the heart says. Get up and get going. Some even leave the ground.

And, more down to earth, I fear, the wail of a siren ... an ambulance, a fire engine, a police car? Someone hurt, something gone wrong, "Help!" someone cried out.

Looking to the floor of the deck, by the railing, some of those remarkable pink flowers quietly lay, starting to wilt. I might wax eloquent about job well done, and all that, but it's not so simple, as I see it. There is something sad, harsh and hard, in the fall of a flower. In this big universe of fire and ice, life expended quickly.

Joy and melancholy ... and then my wife sits at her piano and plays, "Have I Told You Lately that I love You?" ... and my eyes leak a wee bit ... and then, "As Times Goes By," and my throat clenches ... the composer writes, and her fingers dance along the keys, and now here's a sound I can hear, music that touches deep and sweet.

A beautiful day here on our deck in the late morning of a Tuesday in May.