Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

Toucans landed on the field behind your house

improbable, the things we think are beautiful

Why the hummingbird, iridescent and almost impossible to track as it zooms and flits and chitters through the tree

and not the giant black bus of the bee whose heft is long and wide, seeming to defy gravity, land on the curved edge of the hibiscus flower and pull itself up into its pollen-filled Eden?

The wild horse and not its domestic burro cousin?

Births and fat-cheeked babies and not the bones under translucent skin of the fully ripened elder?

Each creature sings its song

we used to think they sang at random

or sang only to other members of their tribe.

Now we know – all creatures are part of a harmonic symphony

waiting for the others to add their part

harmony or melody

call and response

or taking us all to the next movement.

I do not know the song of the toucan

I may not even have seen one with my own eyes

I have cartoon images and a cereal box – perhaps?

Memory is no more reliable

than the flock of toucans that landed on the field behind your house

or the blond cow that wandered down the callejon toward the pueblo

alone, without its group, without its shepherd

we surprised each other, sized ourselves up

both engaged in a moment of internal inquiry

What does it mean to see a cow munching grasses at the side of the uneven stone way, no tags, no marks of ownership, a true descendent of the cerro, heading toward town?

What does it mean to see a blue-capped woman, one of the invasive species that has been sprouting here, heading toward the herd?

I don’t know how the cow will sing of it’s rare spotting of the blue-capped human

who seemed to appear out of nowhere, and just as quickly

turned to scamper away.

This is my melodic line, in the key of dusty hilltop

sung as an offering, a hope that another picks it up

our story going voice to voice around the world.