Art, Nature, Creativity, Life

Virginia A. Spiegel

I was out in my front yard filling bird feeders and decided, unseasonably warm weather or not, it was time to swap the ceramic bird bath for the utilitarian heated one.  How long could weather like this last?  I bent to collect the blue glazed bowl and was stopped in mid-motion.  Right next to the bird bath lay the body of a lovely mourning dove.  I looked, looked away and looked again.  She was perfect, not long dead, a sheen still upon her feathers.   She had undoubtedly flown into the bay window next to the birdbath.

I would have loved to study her more closely; her delicate colors, her tidy black spots, the pink cast to her feathers, but it seemed disrespectful.  I dug a hole and laid her gently in.  It seemed inadequate for such a jewel of a bird, so I gathered dried grass and made her a soft nest around and above her.  Then I softly shoveled the dirt back and placed a large stone on top, as a temporary memorial and as a reminder to me in the Spring.

Because by Spring I will have forgotten this day.  An unseasonably warm day, with life and death all about -- the dry, dry shagbark hickory leaves murmuring, murmuring in the wind like waves upon the shore, the grass still green, the Mary Rose rose buds frozen into little fat pink cabbages.

On such a day it is good to be a gardener.  To know that in the Spring when I see the rock in my garden and remember this sad day, I will also be rejoicing at the sight of one hundred soft pink and one hundred dusky black tulips, the dove's soft colors come alive again.

UPDATE: The photo in the header is of the pink tulips. I had many inquiries about the varieties. They are JoAnn (pink) and Negrita (black). I try to add tulips to my garden every Fall as tulips eventually bloom themselves into an early death.

BEHIND THE SCENES
I've started a new series, The Language of Bees.  Yes, I'm still thinking about all the imagery and metaphors connected with bees.  These are fabric/mixed media collages with paper, silk, upholstery fabric, wax, tissue paper, thread and paint.  Here's a detail from one:

HAIKU
November sun
Golden circle perched
On a shaky black limb
Waiting



RECOMMENDED READING
Conversations About Nature and Creativity
Edited by Jonathan White.



INSPIRATION

This is Euonymus, aptly and commonly known as Burning Bush.