Sunday Morning

Sitting on my back deck, looking at this pure blue through the branches of my apple tree (wild, unpruned, rambling), a single cloud wisp in the corner of my vision —

Hummingbirds performing — they seem always to be such concentrated feathered bundles of energy, amazing for their lack of heft. I filled the feeder for the first time in maybe six months on Friday night at sunset, and yesterday morning they were at it first thing, buzzing first just a few feet from my face as if to say, it's about time. I like to think that they are the same pair of hummingbirds that I first encountered when I returned to my B-Street house two years ago. And they may be, but how is one to know? It's okay to believe this, I do know that. And if so, this may be their last year, as the life span of a hummingbird averages 3-4 years. But no matter. There always seems to be a recognition, a greeting as of old friends, and this is enough.

Thinking, also, of aloneness, of the human — and my — desire for companionship. And how, even with a companion, the sense of loneliness might still exist, intensely. Are we bound by our natures to feel this? And is it necessary, so that we'll continually seek out others, who ultimately help to ensure our survival, if not in literal food/shelter/water, but in the need for human interaction? I believe this to be true.

And so we go on. And the hummingbirds return to my speck of the microcosm, their need for a constant source of nectar driving them to my feeder, my need for connection with another living being driving me to refill the feeder.

Sugar and water.
Apple tree, the blue infinity.
Cloud fragment.
Sunday.
Living, still.