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EBB AND FLOW ©By Russ

Photograph by ©1999 Lynn Shawn



The cat’s plaintif wail outside the cabin door pulls me up and out of bed. I really don’t want to move, let alone hobble unsteadily about on crutches to get the cat food, nor take it out on the porch. It is the most work I‘ve done in a while. Jimmy doesn’t know what’s going on...he just knows it’s time to eat. A long pause on the bench, less to appreciate the view, than to catch my breath. And it’s on to the baby bird in a basket who’s singing that same ‘feed me’ song. It’s a speckled robin, still too young to be alone that has been left in my not so capable care. My doctored leg looks like a fresh pork roast, one prepared in a machine shop. Still I’m grateful it’s attached to me. Em’s white pigeon paces franticaly in his cage.. he wants out... can’t stand being cooped up. And except for the pacing part, I surely understand how he feels. A knock on the door...my son is here. He lives so close by, but has always been so distant. Hugs and kisses from a grown man I barely know, one whom I haven’t kissed since he was small. And now it’s so much ‘bread upon the waters’ floating back to me. Band-tailed pigeons are courting in the shadows of the trees. Small tit mice come seeking black oil seeds, followed by a scruffy looking jay. Misty returns from the vet a bigger wreck than I. Disintegrating spine, senility, cancer of the liver (just to name a few). The ebb and flow of life moves here as it does everywhere. Some are coming, some are going, and a few of us are still hanging on.
Russ







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