The Curse of Consciousness

I’m sitting on the back porch swing, in the early gray morning,

watching a robin fly back and forth across the yard.

She alights on a nearby fence post, ruffles her feathers, and gives me a quick contemptuous look.

Just above me, in the eave of the house, is her nest.

She’s angry with me for interfering with her purpose.

All she knows this gray spring morning is that she has a nest with her young to attend.

She’s been plucking worms from the rain-soaked earth and bringing them to the nest for several days now.

She returned to this same nest in early spring, spruced it up a bit, found her mate, laid her pale blue eggs, and kept them warm until they hatched.

I was reading a poem about life and death and growing old, when she landed on the fence and protested my presence.

I closed the book and looked at her.

She flew to the fence on the other side of the yard.

Birds are singing in the trees all around, two squirrels are chasing each other up and down the walnut tree.

The birds, the squirrels, the trees, do any of them know they are alive, do any of them know of growing old?