Birthday guests

The tiny bushtits gather every morning among the oblong yellow leaves and thin branches outside our kitchen window. They make a miniature, merry band of thieves, small as grey gnats. They're the same color as the rain. Ignoring me completely as they explore, their nubby beaks poking from round faces, they hang upside-down on their twig legs. A flock of elves.

Meanwhile, I sit at the kitchen table, writing articles. A big bouquet of roses, interspersed with clustered white pinks and crowned by irises, leans over my laptop as I type. I bought it for Paul's birthday. I also made us a steaming white bean soup for a birthday dinner, speckled with shredded parmesan, served with wine and bread and a leafy salad.

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,
A book of verse, a flask of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise enow.

-Omar Kayyam

Three weeks ago, an Anna's hummingbird visited me here, just in time for my own birthday. She sat on a twig in her green coat, complete with shimmering lapels, her jaunty beak thrusting upward like a sword. Hummingbirds live here in Washington State year round, according to my Sibley's guide to birds.

So we have our little army of visiting winged creatures, even here in the center of town. Perched above the city like this among the tree branches, level with neighboring rooftops in the rain, I feel separate and magical. Cold grey autumn has settled in, and its tiny pilgrims keep coming by.