My body wakes, says “You’re up.” So that’s it. I’m up.
No matter that it’s 4:30, there is no way back to sleep.
I use the bathroom and hope I’m not disturbing anyone
with the running water.
I catwalk hoping no-one downstairs hears.
All the windows are open. It is dark.
Robins are hunting and calling. House sparrows are insane.
The bird noise is amazing this time of night/morn.
It will only get louder as the sun grows.
A beautiful mallard approached, scanned, and sat
proudly on the rooftop across the way, silent.
I think we know we see each other.
I love his proud neck and poise.
No mallard ever attacked me as I tried to claim
the junk mail at the mailbox. We cool.
A baby squirrel crouches on a pruned limb,
not sure what to make of me as I speak softly, baby talk
telling him it’s ok.
A mockingbird takes command of the garage roof
where squirrel and I are talking, sergeant stripes on display.
He puts a dent in my morning.
Neighbors hustle to their cars, hair still wet.
Tony’s car has a flat tire. So many flat tires
here that no-one can afford to replace.
I light a candle and it reminds me of strawberries.
I like the bright scent today.
The sun will heat the house and the fan will run all day
while I look at everything I need to do and decide
to do
nothing
except pick up the bolt
that fell out of my chair
that I have been ignoring.

It doesn’t take a behavior specialist to understand why the actors thank their moms at the microphone at the Oscars. 
Jamie Lee Curtis did. Many others before her did.  

I’ve watched a great many police interviews with teens and young twenties, male and female. It’s not like what  you see on TV
with shouting or abuse or threats. The detectives just talk to them, trying to get to the heart of the matter. At the end
of the interview, when it’s clear to them where they are headed, most of them ask, deeply sad, “Can I call my Mom?”  

When I was a teenager, I came across a new phrase, a new concept and it shook me:  
“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.”  I meditated on that concept for a long, long time back then.
And I’ve come back to it today as I watch Oscar winners tearfully accept their honor, and I think about the young 
people who want to call their Moms, who need their Moms, as they’re walking off in orange and flip flops, about to be 
cold and afraid for the rest of their lives.  

Right now I feel like, we can never get past that Mom thing, no matter how old we are. We are never not attached. 
It varies in degrees, ever changing, but always there.  They are part of our success and failure and we need them 
no matter what.  Thank you for listening.  

Don’t show me one big square box of blue sky
framed by window, doorway
deeper robin’s egg blue, deeper than turquoise
cloudless
that appears after gale
hurricane.
I need more.

I’d rather see cracks in that sky
maps of khaki branches
swaying or still,
naked throbbing garnet red waiting for the sun
or leafed in thick olive green —
this is the squirrel highway!

Show me gray boughs that cut blue skies like
elephant knees,
baby elephant trunks shoved about in the high breeze
Where winter buds soften
waiting for the spring sun to say
Ready–Set–Go!

She cut down the squirrel highway in favor of her garage,
roughshod roof.
I’ll never see another squirrel nurse her baby there again,
Or crested night heron stare at me in contest in my bedroom.
Mourning doves still sun themselves on the roof
and seem aloof to the sharp shinned hawk that favors them.
Their down smooth. Flat. Threadbare when she’s done with them.

Robins peck my window frantically trying to get in
but I know they belong in the elephant-wrinkled boughs,
dropping down, unlike any other bird I have ever seen,
like Buzz Lightyear,
falling — with style —
to the green.