BY
THE LAKE
The clouds came in over the river; pregnant
with rain and wind and filled with summer lightning -- high, golden, and
faraway.
We sat in the grass by the boat dock and
watched it come; the air around us first empty and silent, waiting for the
storm, then loud with the sound of the wind in the pecan trees and the thump of
the fat raindrops against our backs as we ran for the lakehouse.
Afterwards, the grass was wet and very
green and the sky glowed with the coppery, after-storm glow as we picked up
branches the wind had broken from the trees and stacked them in a pile.
Beneath one of the trees was the nest of a
bird made of brown grass and string. It was torn apart and in it were three
tiny pink and gray sparrows that you said I should not touch because the mother
bird would not take them back if I did.
I picked them up anyway and looked at them
as they squirmed there in the palm of my hands, which always seem too big when
handling very small things or trying to be gentle. The little birds seemed to
be too small to contain all the things that God meant a sparrow too contain and
yet they were very much alive; their black-rimmed, tightly shut eyes and bright
yellow beaks bobbing and pecking at my fingers. They were naked and blind and
as they squirmed there in my hands they reminded me of the things I can never
tell you with my mouth; the words I can only say when I read to you from a book
I love, or touch your hair in the darkness or show you the river at dusk;
things as vulnerable as them and yet ever so more complicated.
You came and took them from me, slowly and
carefully, and held them in the lap of your dress, your July-brown legs
sticking out from underneath as we sat in the wet grass and watched the storm
clouds over the river --- high, golden, and faraway.
--Michael Babel, PERSONA
1982
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