The little things..

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.  ~George F. Will, The Leveling Wind




This is about a blue(jay) birdie who comes every day
to get a bite to eat
and how she hops, in discrete, digital kind of jumps,
her head moving from side to side
almost suddenly
her fear of anything
matches so well with my fear of everything
my heart melts to see her so cautious
not enjoying the food but rather snatching it away
from no one but a hurried moment of fear
she has herself woven
occasionally she will look up at me
with two swift movements of her head
I don't know if she understands what I am trying to tell her
She is like this image of mine
And I keep on telling  her , "its all fine"
but we are so comfortable, so conditioned in our spheres of fear
and its so hard to ask her to look beyond and not hold the railing so tight
that her fingers hurt
I want to tell her that she will not fall from the swing in the park
with the rusty chains I can still smell
May be she worries about the little ones
waiting for her to come back
and she carries away little bits of food for them
in her hurry also inventing new fears for their safety
She comes down and hops back
then comes back again
she knows this is not her territory
I just hope she can claim ownership somewhere
That she isn't stuck with this fear all the time everywhere
I know she does not like cranberries as she always leaves them
maybe for the little brown birds that also hop in sometimes
though I don't know them well,
but the blue birdie is my friend
i know this because she trusts me
she, the one who amplifies fear (just like I do)
so it means a lot , this gesture of hers
she will perch on the railing and chirp
call out to me 
sometimes its early in the morning
and when I go out she will just hop a right angle
and two steps and tilt her head in deep observation
I will try not to make her self-conscious
because I know she is (just like I am)
so I pretend not to look
then I go back and close the screen
and she is not as afraid as I would think she will be
she has already hopped down
and is busy looking around for
any danger any moment
I sometimes think what she thinks of me
if we were friends, how reinforcing our actions would be
she gives me a bird's eye view of myself through her
all my scurried movements in fear
only our centers are different
we both sometimes fail to value what we have
right in front
I sometimes think what if we could play a little game
of being right here , in the precise equality of the present
not a plus or a minus
and focus on it with a magnifying glass
so that the nifs(negative if's) appear blurred and far away 
for once...why don't we trick our fears to fly into the sun with wax wings
let them worry all they want, and we enjoy the little things :-)

The little things...