Like Nobody's Watching

Happy Mother's Day to all!  Poem below.

I've been intoxicated with Spring.  I may backblip to catch up, but maybe not.  So many photos, so many days behind...so much going on I'm missing everyone's journals too...Hope all of you are well! :)

Somebody, (that would be me) watched for a long time as this bluebird couple did their spring dance in unison.  Outer wings up (Extra) --- inner wings up --- both wings back ---dance ---turn 180 degrees ---look down --- repeat routine --- fly to a tall weed---repeat routine ---return to birdhouse and repeat - repeat - repeat.  Isn't Nature grand?

Too much to tell from today's outing, but in extras are the woods, northern flicker, redbreasted grosbeak, trillium with visitor, and muddy bridle path. 

Invisible Work by Alison Luterman

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I think all the time about invisible work.
About the young mother on Welfare
I interviewed years ago,
who said, "It's hard.
You bring him to the park,
run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
and there's no one
to say what a good job you're doing,
how you were patient and loving
for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
because I am lonely,
when all the while,
as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
by great winds across the sky,
thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
the way worms in the garden
tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
and bees ransack this world into being,
while owls and poets stalk shadows,
our loneliest labors under the moon.

There are mothers
for everything, and the sea
is a mother too,
whispering and whispering to us
long after we have stopped listening.
I stopped and let myself lean
a moment, against the blue
shoulder of the air. The work
of my heart
is the work of the world's heart.
There is no other art.