from a 12 Step program for
Recovering the Prophet inside you
by Your Enchanted Gardener
Bird Bath
© leslie goldman, Your Enchanted Gardener
6. Prophets honor the integrity of the moment.
Bird Bath
There was once a bird on a sunny morning warm enough after the dew long dried, who came upon a cement puddle two inches deep just outside my screen door. There before my eyes’s range, mother nature invited me to witness a most sacred ritual. The bird was delirious with a deep-seated sensual joy, as if something was being fulfilled, something so instinctual, so essential. It stood to the right of its makeshift pond and there proceeded to take a bath, first stepping into the water leg length, testing the temperature. Liking it, the bird underwent the most exuberant frenzied immersion, first splashing, circling round and round.
It dipped one side, wet it good, shook it, stretched. Then it continued its ceremony on the other wing, dipping, wetting, stretching, shaking. So touched with this entire experience, the bird could not contain itself, and continued its little water bathing dance with variations on the theme, wetting its little tail feathers, rolling around on its underbelly, doing little hops, skips, and jumps.
I was so delighted by this unabashed explosion of life that the artist in me began spinning a detailed account of what I saw; yet the weight of the day consumed me. When I returned to the word canvas, colors were muddied. I had nothing to say. A moment to be seized was lost; a gift given, unshared.
I mourned for weeks, somewhere in the back of my being.
Oh for the integrity when we take time in the midst of duty to create,
to create wholly.
On this day years later, when the richness of possibility
again threatens to be lost to the tasks at hand,
to the chores that must be done,
to the churning wheels of commerce of my mind,
to the misspent energies of cares and worries
that weeks from now will count for nothing,
I’m remembering a bird and a bird bath, that chirps into eternity.
October 12, 1983
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