A humid morning on the deck, fan whirring, heat still tempered by some faint remnant of nighttime cool. I watch the birds, the tiny wrens whose songs took me so long to identify because their sound was so much larger than them. The hummingbirds who have returned after an early summer hiatus. A male cardinal, his plumage bright red against the green.

How soothing it is to sit here as the birds flit and flutter in front of me. They’re an antidote to the hard times and the bad news. A way to be present in the moment.

In The Backyard Bird Chronicles, Amy Tan writes that the birds she watches heighten her “awareness that life contains ephemeral moments, which can be saved in words and images, there for pondering…”

For me, today, they do that … and more.