the demands of the season

Every sunrise he sits atop the burned digger pine and screams the screams of a desperate lover. He screams so loud, it wakes me even with the double-paned windows. After a while, the subject of his pleads flies to sit next to him and they fly away together, the red of their underwings disappearing into the blue sky.

“It looks like we’re gonna have Flickers nesting on the property this year,” I tell the dogs.

To me, I say, “well, it’s that time when everything feels the need to find a mate.”

And I’m no different than the birds who feel the demands of the season except I never do anything about it because there is no one I like. But this time, since I’m allowing myself to dream another dream after that one bad situation, there is someone I kind of like. But a dream is all it is. I would never act on it, and neither will he. He just circles me as a Turkey vulture circles a dying doe. “What are you running from?” I ask him noticing he never stops circling.

So he tells me his inner most yearnings like the Northern Flicker does every morning at my tree, and I listen.

“What are your demons?” He asks me. I laugh. “Oh, I have them.” And I stop there because it’s not a conversation to be had where we are, and we’ll never see each other anywhere else so the conversation ends there. I would be lying to you if I didn’t admit that I’m really attracted to him and that nature is kicking, but I’ll let it pass and live vicariously through my birds, watch them fall in love and build nests. I will go on all spring and summer monitoring their nests and turning over the data. And that will be that.