by Kurt for Lila, My Miss Finch
She was here. Then she was there. Here, then there. There, then here. Finally, she paused for just a moment on a delicate branch of the Japanese Maple. The branch was so slender and far-reaching that it seemed as delicate as a bluebell’s stem. But her weight was easily held. She was light, as light as the breezed that lifted the branch and made it sway ever so slightly.
She took flight and moved closer to the feeder. But she didn’t go right to it. She took a more circumspect approach to things. A direct route was too predictable, too mundane. Life was best enriched by spontaneity. Her wings were the color of the fresh celandine poppy blooms, new to the morning sun. The sun was on her feathers too, as she stopped again on another stem. Each stop just a bit closer to the thistle seed.
The seed was fragrant. It smelled rich and fresh. Like the morning, it seemed full of depth and possibility. She looked around, surveying her surroundings. She didn’t want to make her last little flight to the feeder if there was going to be an interruption. Say a clumsy house finch butting in, or that boorish showoff male who like to swoop in just before you landed on the perch and steal your place. Not because he was hungry, mind you, but just to preen and make sure she took note of his intense yellow body set off by his striking black markings.
She found such interruptions discomfiting. She never failed to feel disoriented and startled. More still, she would feel awkward and clumsy. So she looked all around. Her little sloped head tilting this way and that.
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