“Margin!” screams my editor. Research into nonprofit-bearing topics belongs overboard, in the shoals of publishing. “Toss them!”

Ah, conflict!

They're all lined up there, along the shore. Evil bankers! Corporate psychopaths. Cheer leaders without pom poms.

A movement might be born, a call to justice. Freedom, recompense for lost wages! Yes, here is conflict. Cognitive dissonance! If only the players could be reached somewhere beyond the borders . . .

The first wave ---

A scythe of bloodied popcorn,

A sigh of snowflakes, haze drifting through schools,

Pip, pip, popping along, throw in a church, a movie theater, home invasions, violent racoons to season the racially stressed.

Bake in academia for seventeen twits, a blink on Facebook, avoid eye contact, turn off the timer.

Ice caps generally stew slower than The Matrix. The reaction time sure beats arguing with an AK47. Terrorists, corporations, nation states, nerd kings, what has love got to do with it, just another four letter word.

If the price weren't so high [everything most people think they are] this might have been avoided. But even to mention it earns a place on several watch lists. It will be called an issue, to quarantine disagreements.

For the time being, my friends are not issuing arguments. It could be said they don't really understand. But I have a problem with that. It's just how we confine what we think we are, all that stuff that is too costly. Abe had it right: You can't fool all of us all of the time.

My friends arrive on telephone wires and branches, fly in from somewhere, land on the fence, jump into the feeder. Even the most obtuse of us must agree they do not bear the burden of human information. But they, and we at least, share the burden of climate change. My friends are not fooled.

Some humans are willing to set aside their burden long enough to understand the problem. I do hear from a few now and then.

            *** *** ***

Performed absentmindedly, a familiar task is unexpectedly transformed. Who is the teacher?

Such Winter ponderables are not entertained by Lady Hummingbird. Her perspective is sweet mind-nectar. Buried in fallow fields, our questions ruminate when no one is looking, to germinate novel blooms.

Mind? -- not your Twitter-Face before you were born. There is a puzzle box. Pull the lever and a hand emerges to pull the lever back. The trap door closes.

In the absence of sensory props, experience falls back onto itself. When experience itself is examined, Winter is good, all the fiefs and domains that assemble it. An international, intercranial domain of languages, traditions, customs, armies and libraries all searching for peace. Trying to unite.

In a small corner Lady Hummingbird hovers. What can she do?

Ask not what you can do . . .

            *** *** ***

There are no embassies in this backyard. Front yard birds are building a nest in the hedge next to the feeder. Throughout our lengthy summer they have tested the situation. Edging in from the lawn to the patio, up onto nearby pots, and lately right up to the legs of my lawn chair, they have been keeping an eye out directly, making small chirps.

Of course it's not just birds, squirrels, hummingbirds and bees. It's about what isn't. No one is pitching my way is best here. Anyone going that way is lost.

Anyone who will just shut up and look directly can find their own way. No books, priests, doctrines, paraphernalia. Stuff packaged as “news” is good for keeping dung beetles busy.