Things I Will Miss

I expect as it gets closer and closer to when I'll be moving and now that most everyone knows that I am going, I will be only melancholy and nostalgic about what I'm leaving. So expect a number of posts with this same title.

Today gets a sub-title: Birds and other flying things:

• The geese that fly overhead to land in the pond at the college down the street.
• The cardinals that stare into our back room from the two trees that are not, but remind me of, a magnolia and a Japanese maple.
• The ducks that are swimming in couples around the pond. The same pond where the geese are trying to land.
• The white-bellied hawks that dive from the tall trees (again, what kind? Alder? Sure, that sounds good) as I drive toward school on the big street named after the big lake.
• Fireflies. When my mom's boyfriend came to visit, he was so surprised. What are these flying lights?
• These black and white tit-mice that land on the sycamore that I watch out the bathroom and hallway windows.
• The black and white woodpecker that eats from that same sycamore.
• The squirrels that seem to fly from branch to branch, from sycamore to hyacinth to fence to pine.
• The chipmunks that chase the squirrels.
• The red-tail hawk that sometimes appears on the sycamore looking for squirrels to eat, and, who one winter, caught and ate a squirrel while perched on top of the snow, leaving the white spattered red.
• The leaves that span seventy-five colors of red--from black cherry to neon pink-- falling to the sidewalk, on the sidewalk.
• The sparrows, plucking clean the already-bare winter branches.
• The spring blossoms, having fallen on the flower beds, blanketing them in May like so much snow did just the other day in April.