The First Noble Truth

 The bird I am hearing sing these days is the Anna’s Hummingbird. High pitched, not biological sounding. Repetitive like a regularly irregular heart rhythm. They can be hard to spot, though have some favorite branches. Near the top of the spruce he must be king over the junkos and maybe even the blue jays. The thrush are silent. It just happened one day, just as suddenly as the first day they sang in spring. My hens sing the blues, especially at dawn, not full throated, just a moan or a pondering while pecking here and there. I cannot picture eating them. Today they got our past-ripe bananas, since none of us likes banana bread all that much. Bananas are eaten in phases in this house. Apparently this past week was not a pro-banana era. Grocery stores giving us fruit on demand makes it easier to ignore, I imagine, than it would be if we could only eat it in season and if it grows locally. People do line up at the Farmer’s market for early summer strawberries which bear no resemblance to the monsters shipped in, picked long ago and far away. Peaches probably create the longest queue. Masked produce-seeking neighbors, patient in their single file peachophilia. Yesterday on the way to the beach with my dog, a semi pulled into the street, stopping traffic in both directions. Forward, backward, into a fence, forward, backward. The man directing them had an infant in a sort of football hold on his forearm. Some behind me pulled out of line and turned around to seek another route. Dog and me just waited. We did not delude ourselves into thinking the truck driver was separate from us. When we are the truck driver, we can only keep reversing and pressing the gas until the damn thing can be extricated from a cul-de-sac it should never have entered. Today we went to the beach again. My dog smells like shit so after the beach I stopped at the pet supply store and purchased this $17 shampoo to deodorize “doggone” smells. The bath was warm and he was completely sudsed up. I trimmed nasty dreadlocks and scrubbed every canine nook and cranny. Now he is asleep in the sun and smells at least $17 dollars better. Has this been a productive day? Week? Month? Life? Prior life? Future life? I almost have Liszt memorized. I ran 20.8 miles on Sunday. I walked with Nancy and swept my front porch. I watched Schitt’s Creek and sat zazen. I hugged my husband and found myself aware we are both going to die. I seem to crave chocolate chips. Then tomorrow I step back into my patients’ suffering, which I never really left. The blue jay is screaming. I cannot decide if they are angry or the lead singer of a heavy metal band. Either way it is loud and difficult to dance to and I assume never once featured in a Disney musical. I doubt anyone has considered the suffering of unquiet avian minds. Or vice versa.