Lead
By Mary Oliver
Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.
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I had my annual mammogram and first bone density scan on Friday right after lunch, so that was the major activity of a very rainy day -- well, that and two showers, because I wasn't allowed to put on deodorant in the morning so I felt gross both before and after the scans. I had a bunch of unexciting chores when I got home plus cats who mistakenly believed I had left without feeding them (I hadn't) and birds hiding from the rain on our deck who completely emptied the squirrel-proof feeder twice.
We had dinner with my parents, then we came home and watched Doctor Strange in anticipation of seeing The Multiverse of Madness next week. That was a movie that I enjoyed but wasn't really invested in when I first saw -- I loved the Inception-like visuals, I enjoyed the performances -- but after the Infinity Saga and Spider-Man, I like Doctor Strange better as a character and I care more about Christine after What If? Great blue and black-crowned night herons at Lake Whetstone:
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