When I pulled into the driveway this evening, I was surprised to see a small brown bird fly up and into the yew bushes: Song Sparrow. I felt irrationally sure that this was the sparrow that spends the summer in our back yard, the one we see fly the same pattern over his territory every day, who sings from our brush pile. I could hear him scratching around in the dead leaves at the base of the rhododendron. I was filled with a strange urge to catch him, cup him tenderly, and feed him from my hand. Instead, I tossed some seed in his direction, knowing that if I tried to do more than that, it would only startle him. And he did, in fact, then make a beeline for the brush pile. A wild free thing. But his return makes me happy.

Touching a sparrow--
we can't have everything we want.
Even small things.