Breakfast with Moriah: NaPoWriMo #2

Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you
acceptance of what is, to surrender to the Now. Let it teach
you being…how to live and how to die.- Eckhart Tolle

I stop watering the plants to watch
what the wind has blown in.
A chipping sparrow breakfasts
at our battered green feeder,
one seed at a time. So many shakes
of his feathered hat to shiver the kernels down.
Because old men eating alone make my heart hurt,
I put my coat and feathers on,
bare my toes to grip a branch
when I notice he is not alone.
They call the wind Moriah.
Gusty waitress, she has pushed
another customer in the wings,
a fine red cardinal. Expecting a bluster
of twittering from the showy diner
I am surprised to find him mildly riding
the waves of the day’s brash weather,
waiting to eat. I shrink to the level
of my cat. Watch the sparrow settle in,
rest in the lip of the feeder.
The cardinal waits.
The sparrow rests.
I watch.
I watch.
I do not know whose heart sinks lower
the wind’s,
the cat’s,
or mine, when the birds fly off.