Quiet Sunday Mornings
May 11, 2025 posted by John Richards
The sound of the waking Mockingbird dominates as the sky lightens into the grey of a stormy day. The Titmouse pair take turns at the feeder, periodically interrupted by the Cardinals. The ratatat of a hungry Woodpecker is heard in the distance, creating a tympanic rhythm to the morning symphony.The kitten lies curled in the chair, looking up at me as I take in the newscast from the Brickyard Bayou, sipping the last bit of the morning Black Wine. Under the feeder, a few of the volunteer Sunflowers bend their heads as, having completed offering their nectar and pollen, they develop their seeds, no longer needing to seek out and follow the sun. Many others open their bright faces, looking up trying to find a focus. An early active Gulf Fritillary flutters about among them.
Refilling my mug inside, I chuckle at the comedic offerings of Bob Crane and Werner Klemperer, as they give ridiculous tales of a German POW camp. The last remnants of the nights dreams slowly fade into the recesses of the mind as the caffiene performs the ordering of awakening.I repair otuside, once more, as John Banner affirms, "I know nothing. I see nothing. I say nothing!"
Walking among the Magnolia virginiana and Nyssa sylvatica, I smile as I observe the Lactuca floridana rising above the undergrowth of the bayou shore and the paths are lined with Drosera seeking the unaware insect foraging. Slightly swollen, approaching its banks, the bayou continues taking in the runoff of the stormy Spring, the Dragonflies playing along the surface as the mosquitoes try to emerge from their larval stage. Looking up as I detect an alarm from a few Jaybirds, a passing Red-tailed Hawk coasts by along the currents above the pines. In the oaks across the bayou, a pair of squirrels frolic as they begin their day. Like the stoic and steadfast Bald Cypress, I render praise and honor to my Maker for the witnessing of a new day.
Morning . Nature . Stoic
“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
Elements combined, amino acids form and coalesce into protiens. Carbohydrates develop and combine with the protiens, create complex acids that transform into nucleic sequences that begin to guide the combined and interacting compounds into a sophisticated yet simple organism, destined to become something even more amazing. Hundreds of thousands of years later, after many changes, cataclysms and evolutions, we , the ancestors of those simple protiens, carbohydrates and nucleic acids, struggle to understand a purpose behind the process started so many aeons ago. For this one descendant, at least, I don't truly think there is much more purpose beyond that which has been here from the start. The drive and desire to just be, and to follow the path we are on as it unfolds and creates itself before us.