Author: Rae Spencer

Photo Failure, Tufted Titmouse

Rae Spencer2 Comments

I’ve been hearing a tufted titmouse call for weeks. These birds have a loud, clear call that carries. (You can hear a sample here.) I find it hard to guess how far away the bird is, when I hear one calling, but it always seems to be across the road or in a neighbor’s yard or a few streets over.

Today one visited our yard, hopping through the pear tree as it sang. I desperately wanted a picture of this little bird and managed to catch several frames of it. None of them are quite right. The top photos are my best shots of the day, but I never did get “the” picture.

The following are a few of my failures. They are like many of my writing failures, suffering from poor focus, flat light, or awkward angles. But, unlike my writing, I can’t save these photos. They are missed opportunities with no chance of salvage. I can’t edit them into success.

I hope to remember these photos the next time I sigh over a stubborn phrase, resenting the work of revision.

From the Dove Archives

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Our yard is full of doves. I watch and listen as they amble along our fence, browse beneath the feeders, and coo low love songs from our roof. I follow their nests in our pear tree, in our roses and pansies, and wave goodbye when the fledglings fly away. Do they return, sometimes, when they are ready for nests of their own?

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All these doves in our yard. Do they also watch and listen, wondering where we came from and where we will go?

Sunset Rainbow

Rae Spencer7 Comments

Yesterday evening my back yard was the rainbow, my front yard the pot of gold.

Little Mysteries

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(First, I apologize for the green fence. I blame the weather.)

Second, there’s a rabbit in the rose bed. It’s been there most of the morning, and I have no idea why. It isn’t grazing, just sitting in the rain as if waiting for something.

Third, there’s a squirrel on the fence above the rabbit. A full-alert squirrel, complete with full-alert scolds, waving its tail in agitation.

Fourth, there are yellow-rumped warblers. Flitting and chirping in nearby branches, the warblers add credibility to the squirrel’s alarm. (Because birds are more credible than squirrels…)

But there’s nothing to explain the rabbit’s vigil, or the squirrel and warbler alarm. It’s just a scene, a few moments cut from the yard’s mysterious context.

I feel like a child, plaintive in my need to know. I ask, again and again, “Why?” And the yard, like a distracted mother, answers with silence.

On the Learning of Things Small

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On the Learning of Things Small

Eve understood her sentence
The source of such expansive pain
Which blossomed in her womb
Seeded by an excess of knowledge

But her children
Though given the tale
Lapsed into miniature schemes
They hungered to harvest

New fruits and found suffering
Weaves through the smallest gaps
Like atoms and genes
Twined into a fitful scale

Until detonated, when
They unwind their blinding
Flash in every flesh, then
Mushroom into brilliant loss