Words, and stories as I've remarked, short change reality which just moves on, like the fat lady spilling over edges. Well, read my palm . . .

*** *** ***

The camphor tree had become a problem. At the end of the day it yielded a round slab that has become the table next to this chair. Sadly, the tree was beautiful. Now the linear record of its life endures, an elegant reminder. The dark heart wood, brown as dried blood, ringed by tan years of growth, a spreading delta under the shallow red dish for a small bird. Black cowl, white beak, grey and tan body, which had been no match for big doves in the feeder. So lovable are they not? but gentle seeming doves are bullies.

The red dish, full of seeds, became a haven for the little bird, and a beautiful answer to the contradictions.

White beak quickly identified the new source of seeds, coming often to its small trove, which was being refilled every morning. By evening always empty.

One morning the dish was gone! Seeds were scattered everywhere, over the table, onto the patio, and there on the green lawn there lay the dish -- knocked off by – maybe a dove?

From inside the living room, heard through the screen door, came Tabitha's muffled meow. I know that meow. When I got there she proudly displayed her trophy, which surprisingly was just about half her size.

The dove looked up at me desperately.

“Tabitha, I know this is in your genes but this bird is a friend.” I squeezed the hinge of her jaws, cupping between my hands the softly pulsing bird, still looking into my eyes. It did not struggle. Gently I smoothed back the feathers of its head, carrying it outside to the planter box, safe for the moment. Without hesitation it flew up out of the box and onto a branch of the hackberry tree. Where it sat, watching me.

This comfortable March summer morning, another contradiction, the tea was already getting cool. There was to be no rest. Suddenly appearing, a fast moving message from Universe.net, just fast as the pen could move:

*** *** ***

GAS LAMP BLUES

If it jiggles, it's fat: -- muscle power's last stand!

Get a summer job, son. Be virtuous. You're needed, since Lincoln and his damn proclamation. Labor isn't cheap anymore. Be enterprising. Get a power mower, and you know somebody's got to steer it. Save up for college, pay for gas (no one rides for free) and when you graduate and find a good job you can pay someone else to do your lawn. After all, it's got to be done.

While you're there don't pay attention to those activists who're gonna say that lawns use up too much space and water. And gas when you get right down to it. . .

Do I contradict myself? Very well. But we need gas. Everything runs on it.

Lawns were a good thing once, for English nobility, lots of fog in England. There was the slave trade for awhile, until finally enough people decided it was inhumane. Steam was OK, until the coal smoke choked London, all that pea soup killing innocent factory workers. But now we've got gas!. Real muscle.

.Well, nowadays they'll tell you that gas is worse than the pea soup -- the whole earth being suffocated by this invisible hand you know, this invisible Empire of bad weather. Darth Vader? Well sure, saw him in a TV ad for that movie, so many of them.

Mark my words, son, reality is pumped out of the ground, refined, brings us civilization, leisure for things like this rant, operas, paintings, charbarrel whiskey, Homer, Saturday Night Live – and wasn't that a gas last night!

What would we do without it?

(Message complete.)

*** *** ***

And the dove still watching from the hackberry. How could I know what it was thinking?

Back to reading.

Then suddenly, loudly --! flapping wings. The weight on top of my hat! I have to

say --

No other wild bird I've ever known has come for a visit so up close and personal.