Some days I think of blowing off Greek, keeping the keyboard set to English — I must go on, I can’t go on, not about Greek — five great egrets, no, six, stand at attention in front of my next-door neighbor’s seawall. About the same number of cormorants lift out of the pond into shallow air & drop back down again, dive. Nick the naturalist laughs at cormorants’ attempts to fly. Look at them! he cries, They thrash, they flog, they barely clear the water!
While brushing my teeth I saw a great blue heron on my dock, two great egrets in the shallows, four white gulls overhead, two cormorants swimming beyond the dock, their heads horizontal, salt water swirling around them. Dive. Songbirds on the gutters, I in my chair, watch the show.
I sip hot coffee. I should be wheeling the trash barrel out front. The washing machine grunts. Small birds swoop across my vision, east to west across the back yard. Coffee such an odd delight, acrid, softened by half & half. A washer-load of water screws itself down the drain.
I’m doing laundry mostly because the dishwasher failed yesterday, proving to myself that the washing machine still works, as if appliances were flowers fading all at the same time. The dishwasher failed by not responding to the START button — circuit breaker not thrown, plug & outlet unreachable behind the built-in machine.
Last night in two sessions I hand-washed the load of dishes, set them to dry, half in the dishrack, half in the machine. I’ll need a dishpan. Who says I need a new dishwasher? I have one, her name is Carol. The smooth warm surface of a clean plate is a delight.
