Three Birds at the Bird Bath
The birds were already there when I looked up, the bath in the far corner of the yard, half in light, half left out of it. A wren came first. Small. Quick. Easy to miss if you weren’t watching. She dipped, drank, then flicked water from her wings like it didn’t belong to her. Then the mourning dove... gray in that way that takes in light without giving it back. She stepped in slow, not timid, just used to being careful. Didn’t drink right away. Stood there a moment, as if listening to something under the surface. The robin came last. Not proud…
The Stone I Took
I was driving somewhere, past the part of Massachusetts where maps just get tired and give up - Otis, maybe, or a town pretending to be Otis because it liked the sound of the name.
At the Berkshire Garden
Morning opened in Albany - the city stretching itself awake, lights blinking off along the Hudson, a heron lifting from the shallows. Coffee steamed the car’s small interior as we turned east,
