03/12/2011

Common ground

Note to self: G'ville is hosting annual Festival of Lights this evening. When we go out tonight, do everything possible to avoid it.
I'm just now watching a couple of finches duke it out in the Bird Park in yet another late afternoon food fight. They get intense when seed levels drop to the bottom hole. Plus it's cold out there. And in here. I'm bundled up. Even my hair is mashed under the blanket. I am immobile as a giant winter doll, other than the freewheeling fingers typing these words. It took a few goes before they agreed to tap out "words" rather than "worlds". In the meantime, it seems to me that the repeated hard drives to the letter "L" scared the finches off. In spite of all their chest bumping, they are timid fellows.

Now, balancing along the fence top, the quail covey makes its twilight return to scratch and peck the remains of the day.* Three of them linger at the water bowl awhile then wander off to nibble the apples. Gray fat birds fading into eventide.

*All due respect to Kazuo Ishiguro.

4 comments:

Roy said...

I do like the idea of our fingers tapping out worlds.

asha said...

Yes. Me too. It's just that the whole thing turned into a little power struggle and what ended up in the post was the compromise.

Don said...

You are both resting your chins on your fists, pondering worlds tapped out by fingers flying across the keys, scribbled out by pens trailing ink, scratched by sticks into the earth ...

Does Earth give birth to worlds? Yes, all the time.

asha said...

Don, nice.

Yes. Earth very definitely gives birth to worlds, as do fingers. I just didn't want to claim such in my post about nothing. I am, after all, inclined toward pomposity and very easily get drunk on words and make a fool out of myself in public with flights of flowery speech. Out of a sense of self-preservation and respect for others, I try to channel this inclination towards the poetry where readers are not sandbagged but instead come for such or have the option of avoiding it altogether but between you, me and Roy, yes I do rather like the line "freewheeling fingers typing these worlds". There. I said it. Now we can, we three, rest our digital chins on our digital fists and mellow in the glow of our collaboration that shall forever (they say) reside in the cloud of one and zeros that connects us all.