Indira Ganesan, Two (video), 2020

There is a resilience on my balcony that is often more than I can muster.  The third set of mourning doves have hatched.  At least one chicklet has made it, and I can only guess that the other successfully broke out of its shell.  One can’t help feeling protective, worried until they  make it off the balcony, alive.

I woke from a nightmare this morning.  A young man was pushing himself into my door, demanding I write him a recommendation.  You are the best teacher of satire, it is known, he said, as I firmly tried to close the door shut.  I woke in a panic, and fed the cats.  What can it mean, that I might have written comedy instead?  Of course, I always thought I was.

This balcony continues to surprise me, quietly.  The hummingbirds continue to dive into the nectar, the birds continuew to breed.  Some bumble bees come to investigate but all I can offer them are pansies.  Their food is in the backyard, in the flowering Joe Pye’s Weed.   A jay screeches its irritation–who has wronged it now?  I feel like that jay, angry at the world , or frustrated, before its, my, voice tires.

Where will we be a year from now?  What will have changed in our daily lives? Will there really and truly be a woman in the White House who knows what an idli is, who has walked on Marina Beach?

A hummingbird comes by and dances with her tail feathers , perhaps with her reflection at my window.  Up and down she dances, having drunk from the salvia, and then she flies off to rest on a tree limb.  I watch because I wonder how long she will stay, content.  She stays for several minutes, until someone comes by, gravel crunching under their feet.

I watch the green outside my window this day in late August, wonder if we will ever get rain again? I know that soon the trees will change color and fall.  Is fall simply a word to describe the action of leaves, as spring describes the bounce of new growth?  Spring into action, then fall down? Fall down to spring up again?