An open-air market: walking through neighborhood yards during today's lunch hour, I caught two American Goldfinches at their own work. My camera has been bundled in my satchel nearly every day of the summer, so I quickly pulled it out; and for the next two minutes I crept, a foot forward at a time, lens up, stalking the birds.
Nearly ten feet away, I snapped a couple reasonably well-defined exposures before I took the step that finally frightened the two creatures and sent them flying off, a startled peep each.
I grinned, watching the finches' progress upward through florid yellow, green and blue before losing sight of them; and began walking at a regular pace again, cutting through yards to where I had parked my car. Like everyone else I had Hurricane Katrina's wake on my mind, and that moment with the birds tugged at a memory. I was readying myself for the day on the morning of July 14, 2001 when my father picked up the phone to receive the anticipated message from my uncle that my grandfather had died. Over the murmur of the brief conversation between brothers, I heard an exuberant twittering of birds outside an open window in my parents' bedroom and considered the birth up a tree in the yard; and out in the city, the state, the country and the world, as one man's life came to an end, after nine decades, in Astoria, New York. Creation having made — through youth — tomorrow possible, I thought, none of what came before will be in vain.
My thoughts turned to New Orleans, then back to the memory, and I took great consolation.