December 2004

Here or there, I never lock the farmhouse and always leave the my keys in the vehicles, not being terrified by theft, I never loose keys and this is a comfort of the country.  The kittens snooze in the upholstered rocking chair by the wood fire, their legs entwined in a character meaning contentment I suppose, knowing no Chinese.  Outside the fly specked windows of the sun porch, the protesting Chickadees wing away from the police Blue Jay at the bird feeder, swaying in the icy wind that gusts through the leafless lilac where I hung it several years ago.  Twenty-nine different birds have come to this feeder that I fill daily with black oil sunflower seeds.  Near the window I keep Peterson's 'A field Guide to the Birds' on a dull brass table under an ever-lit, atrocious orange and green faux Tiffany lamp that my ex-wife had the good taste to ignore when she left with the real ones.  

Last year a male Cardinal came along with his consort that some might call dowdy, but the sliding tones of her green-brown feathering intrigue me more than his flat catholic red.  New arrivals flatter and make me feel like a good host and I circle them in the field guide. This past warm October a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet appeared. At first glance, it looked like any number of confusing Warblers but the male has "a scarlet crown patch (usually concealed; erect when excited)." So Peterson in hand, I move closer to the window to provoke the tiny olive-gray Kinglet; sashaying sideways for a better view when it flits behind a lilac branch, I square dance with this shy red head.

The house is chilly with wind coming in around the old windows; I put another ash log in the woodstove, drape my shoulders with a worn merino throw and look for the rose-gray scarf that Patricia graciously knit for me, now where is it? The kittens scamper off, my zig-zag search around the house disturbs them.  Looking for something is a body stutter, not here, not here, not here, ah there's my scarf, in the rocker where the kittens were and it's now kitten warm around my neck.  Worse than looking for something is waiting for something. 

I have no yarn left to dye; for a month the spinnery has been telling me my new yarn will arrive "next week" and some "next week" it will arrive, my waiting will conclude and I will dye. But there is another kind of waiting, waiting for the unknown, waiting for an undetermined future to complete the present, a waiting that has no conclusion. This waiting deadens our experience of the present; it involves fear that is fostered by the government.  Madison Avenue knows that sex sells, Pennsylvania Avenue knows that fear sells better. The corporation sells us  product, the government sells us production, the production of fear is terrorism.  War will not bring peace and the gutting the Constitution by the Patriot Acts will not ensure liberty.  Our security is not to be found in Iraq, it is to be found in Iowa and here. It's not us or them, it's us and them and kittens and birds.

Eugene Wyatt