. Spinning .

It swoops low through the branches at the bottom edge of the yard.  It’s big, I see that.  And black.   It rounds a slow sloop just in front of the cedar.  Up the hill still rounding the short side of an arc and facing me now.  I see the dark fingered edges of his wings, the golden triangle of a beak that seems to hang beneath a lavendar-red head bent low.  The wings beat like a funeral march, but silent…silent.  He turns just as I start to fear a collision, passes ten feet in front of me, eye-level; I swear his eyes stay on me as he passes.

Turkey vulture.  Why so close to me, I wonder, then I think; was he circling just above me?

In facing the loss of all a computer holds these days, replacing papers and photos and lists and thoughts, I looked around and wondered about reaction.

Of course I felt the fool in not having backed up all the files and yet, I wasn’t real upset about the loss in general.  I have two, maybe three hard drives full of "stuff" that I haven’t tried very hard to recover.  More upsetting was the fact that the most upsetting was the loss of all the files on the estate and probate; much of it evidence in proving how bad my sister’s acting in the handling of it all.  How sad that this should need to mean so much. 

I’ve lost stories, poems, a novel I believe on lifeless hard drives.  What does it matter after all?  In looking around at what we have and call possessions, there’s not much I would grieve over for very long.  Old photos, sentimental things like rosary beads and small gifts of special jewelry, my mother’s sewing scissors, her drawings, my father’s shirts.  Those, lost forever, would take longer to accept.  I sit here faced with the shelves and shelves of carefully selected and acquired books.  That would be tough to lose and yet they’re likely every one of them replaceable. 

I remember going through my dad’s house after he died, the first few times knowing that my sister could use most of the furniture and things, and what I didn’t need or have a connection to I never thought of taking.  Going back again after the troubles started; taking a more serious look because I knew I’d never see these things again.  I took a tiny vase, a worn-out knife; everything fit in one shopping bag.

Things are things whether they are touched or merely written down and read.  Things are only things.

Early morning thinking isn’t as profound in spring and summer; sunlight dissipates, reduces musings to a silly few.

Thinking of the writing, stories, unpublished mid-age angst and anger possibly lost within a metal box, and yet, where would they be if computers weren’t invented? 

From there to here, or rather, hair.  Hair, cut off in inches, trimmed a bit or fallen out (a constant process, so I understand)–where does it go?  Will some of it outlast me?  Still be in the backyard, in the car, beyond Connecticut and possibly in Michigan, or Florida, or up north into New Hampshire and Vermont, wherever I have been once, shedding hair.

Looking outward from inside me, embarrassed by self-centeredness of thought, I see the birds.  A thought occurs:  all have two feet, two wings, feathers and a beak, yet some eat worms, others seeds, some flying bugs or carrion.  I wonder why?  All cats large and small prefer a fresh-killed animal.

Back to me and hard drives.  Lost lore or starting new and fresh?  What difference does it really make?

Long scratches, points of bleeding on my arms.  Back to caring, back to fighting bushes back to claim the yard.  Allowed one year to make their way into the space beyond the earth they’re planted in, they go astray.  Wild and free.  Someday so too will I.