In My Back Yard
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So what’s happening here? Not much; we’re sitting in my back yard in Silver Spring, Maryland because it’s the first warm day we’ve had in months and my friend John Christy is looking in his bird book for a bird he’d just seen. On the ground a couple of fat mourning doves graze on the residue from the bird feeder. Others sit in the mulberry tree, mourning. A black squirrel keeps a wary eye on the pugs. Mr Woolford ( Wooley) wanders over, hoping to find excitement; note the disappointment on his face. I am told the Chinese believe that the wrinkles on a pug’s forehead equal the lines in an I Ching hexagram. Mr Woolford’s lines never quite form a hexagram but he doesn’t seem to mind. John mentions that a blackbird’s tail appears be vertical when it flies because it uses its tail as a rudder. Sure enough, as if on cue, a blackbird zips by, its tail properly vertical. It feels like the first day of Spring in Washington although the almanac says Spring arrived ten days ago. It’s one of those days in which nothing happens yet years later you find yourself wondering what it all meant.
