Category: Morning Meditation

Shushu, shushu, shushu, shushu……the sound of one machine powering another flowed across the road, though the barnyard, over the pastures, between the leaves of the pussy willows, alders and black birch growing in the marsh.

Our new neighbors got to work on their new building early and the drone of the kerosene powered machine was like a heartbeat as I sat on the Gulley Bridge meditating.

Still I was able to hear the trickle of  low water over rocks and the late summer song of the birds.

The last few times I sat at the Gulley Bridge Catbirds kept me company.   I’ve come to expect them, with their cat-like call.

But today there was a flurry of small birds, hopping on the branches of the bushes that hang over the stream.  At first I only saw movement.  The flicker of shadow and light, the bounce of a leaf.

The longer I sat and the more still I was, the closer they came.  Until one hopped onto the opposite end of the bridge… and looked at me?

I could only see that they were small,  silhouettes against the gray morning light.   Until one took his time on a branch so close I could see his bright yellow breast and the black mask around his eyes.

I could try reaching for my iPhone which was in my boot behind me.  But I knew if I moved that much, he would fly away.

I thought about how when I look at something long enough it leaves a image on my eyes.  If  I spend a long time weeding, when I got to bed at night and closed my eyes, I saw weeds.  Even for the short amount of time that I sat this morning looking at the two planks of wood that make up the bridge, when I closed my eyes, I saw the negative them.

So I looked, just looked, at the little bird with the bright yellow breast and black mask, and without thinking about it, found that I could remember the bird as if I had taken a picture of him.  That the bird whose name I didn’t know was recorded in my brain, just as good or maybe even better than if I had taken his picture.

Better because I’m more likely to remember him, since now he lives in my brain and not my iPhone or computer.

Later in the day I googled… little bird with yellow breast and black mask around his eyes, and found that, along the way of human history, someone had named this bird a Common Yellowthroat. 

It wouldn’t have worked the same if this bird didn’t have such distinguishing features.

To my eye the females  were grayish brown with a hint of yellow and would have been harder for me to identify.  I think I might know them less from their color and markings and more from their shape (short and plump) and their movements (considered and fearless).

As I left the bridge the heartbeat of our neightbor’s machines got louder.  But the bright yellow breast and the black mask of the little bird overpowered the noise.

There is a good chance I will forget the name of the Common Yellowthroat, but I will not forget what he looks like.  And the next time I see him, I’ll say to myself, there is the kind bird who was not afraid of me while I meditated.  As brazen as his yellow beast and secure in his black mask.

I was sitting under the pine tree in the back pasture meditating when the deer, still with white spots, but more a teenager than a baby, appeared in front of me.

I saw another young deer run off and disappear in the wildflowers, but this one stood watching me.

I stayed very still at first, not wanting to chase him away.  He got closer and closer, staring straight at me.  He was still a distance away  when I took out my iPhone to take this video.  I was a little surprised when he didn’t run away.

It seemed like the was getting comfortable with me being then when he suddenly took off, his big white tail, eventually the only part of him I could see.

When the timer on my phone went off, I took a little walk into the pasture and saw  both of the deer run off.  They had been under the apple trees, no doubt eating the fallen apples while I was meditating.

I was glad they felt safe enough to graze while I was there.

I breathe with the spiders web.

Stretched horizontally over the pond, it pulses up and down on a breeze too slight to chase even  the mosquitos away.

It stretches towards the Joe Pye weed, is pulled back by the tug of pussy willow when a bird hops from branch to branch.

I pull my hood around my face, place my hat on top of it.

Long sleeves, socks, leggings and my skirt tucked under my knees.  The only skin available to the many mosquitos is on my face.

They land on my stomach, my legs, my chest,   I watch them probe, trying to find blood, but the layers are too thick.

I heard that mosquitos will go away when you swat them.   So I swat and watch the mosquito fly off, only to have another land on my nose.

The bird in the pussy willow flys low over the pond, not two feet above the web.   Like the light of a dying star or the wake of a boat,  it takes some time for the movement of the bird to reach the web.

When it does,  the web sinks low enough to  skim the water, then arches back up, slowing to stillness.

I become the spider, disappointed when the mosquito bounces off the web.  My face becomes bait, as I squish the tiny angels between my fingers and cheek.

I breathe with the spider web.
It flows up, then down, then up again.

It’s only after sitting for almost an  hour that I see the spider.

I look away for a moment at the mosquito on my leg.  When I look back an insect big enough to call the spider out of her lair is stuck in the web.

The spider is long.

Long thin legs reaching out in front and behind of her long thin body.

She spends some time with the insect, doing something too far away for me to see.  Then the spider, walking upside down on the bottom of the web, hops across it,  breaking it as she goes, and disappears under the bowed Iris leaf where she’s been waiting all along.