Donnies

A  most  unusual  feeding  habit  the  Great  Crested  Grebe  does  have.

He is facing out of the window of a blistering train, as a conveyor belt of events flies before his eyes. He is leader of the world right now, assessing all matters from his chair, absorbing all the visceral content, which to some greater or lesser degree may eventually take him somewhere. He is feeling the future.

The swirling murmurations above his gaze may one day connect and inspire him to play the fiddle, the fool or the field. He may one day see everything for what it truly is. Define it in an equation, in paint, prose, or in a dress. We simply do not know.

His face is a market of flickering eyes and sounds, but all the while his little right hand is holding his mothers, who is standing at his side, chattering ten to the dozen and then some to another grown up. Their connection is live. They need not speak any words. Their donnies caress, weave and fondle one another like two elephant trunks, whilst they are separately preoccupied with their own business. They have their own murmurations. A sequence of precious patterns, something already known before it is taught. This is nature at its finest, but one day he will face good and he will face evil, and he will have to make choices, he will sometimes suffer and sometimes prosper. He will have to go it alone. And his mother must watch him knowing so.

His little head is turning this way and that, in his blue beanie hat, wrapped in beige blanket, his curious face peering as if through a letter box, with his mitten donnies pointing here and pointing there, explaining the world to us he is as it unfolds right before him. He has everything figured out and everyone needs to know.

And still their hands caress one another, his tiny fingers checking for confirmation, for reassurance, for home. Little hands hold such great opportunities. She will let go one day though, perhaps after he has, and it will break her, for a while, but she must, as she will know when their autumn arrives. Love is patient, it can sit and it can wait for its owner to return. and when his great migration is complete they will reunite in some later spring. She will be waiting and he will know this, and they will need not speak any words for she gave him the feathers he needed, just as the Great Crested Grebe does with its young.