View from the Kitchen

When I was in Boston in April, someone asked where I liked to write. “I’m usually at the kitchen table, but it’s a sadder spot in spring when I have to take down the birdfeeder outside the window.”

“Why do you take down the birdfeeder?” she asked.

“We live in western Massachusetts,” I said. “Near the woods.”
Here’s the bigger answer, what I saw from my kitchen table yesterday morning.

This bear lumbered through the yard and down the hill. Birdfeeders are long down. The trash bin has been piled with shovels and rakes, my own little bear trap device (theory being the racket they’d make would scare them off, and to some extent, this seems to work).

Now I’m on the porch, enjoying the perennials and end-of-bloom azaleas.

I’m starting to get used to the quieter days, and trying to use that word – quiet –instead of lonely. I’ll be teaching again come fall, and need to use these long stretches of time between to finish the loveliest possible draft –though I’ll settle for good on this round — of my prose/poetry book set in Sumer. Silence starts to feel a little more comfortable. I notice the way its holes let in new ideas. And how I can fill it up with the soft clatter-clack of my keyboard. Silence mostly, yes, but the catmint and late-blooming lilacs have a scent I get to breathe in.