The air changed overnight with the arrival of the rain. It's chillier now, less humid, more like the September in your mind. You think maybe you are singing along a frequency the mushrooms will understand. You keep remembering a band of them growing on the trail and imagining they had a message for you. What if you missed it? The call that would have changed your life.
She said if I stood still with seeds in my hand they would sense my peace and come. This morning I stood holding a bowl of sunflower seeds while the chickadees and a titmouse fell upon the feeders. I got to within about a foot of them - one edge of the platform feeder to the other - before they became too apprehensive to land.
I held the cup of seed out until my arm started to tremble and my shoulder began to ache. I remembered times holding a rifle out that way, and heavy lead x-ray tech vests in both hands with arms outstretched to the sides while gagging on bite-wings shaking hard and bleeding sweat, and other similar things I inflicted upon myself in the service of preparation and purification. I remembered the sun dance, chest pierced, leaning back with my weight against the rope under a pale hot sun trying to transcend. Tension, will, sacrifice, endurance. Trial by ordeal. I don't know how that relates to peace.
But the birds couldn't find it either.
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