A robin

As I write this there’s a robin, orange breasted and large, full-looking as if it had just eaten a bunch or was full of eggs, napping in the lilac tree in front of the dining room window. It’s sitting and sometimes closing its eyes and sometimes looking at me, relaxed, balanced on the branch as it doesn’t move much in the slight breeze. The robin has a cleft in the middle of its orange feathered chest. As it’s grooming I can see that the underfeathers are dark, brown or black, with some white near the tail. It can reach most of its body with its beak and its flexible neck. I’m impressed. It even can scratch its own collarbone. It woke briefly when the mail woman walked past and put a letter in our letter slot. I stayed put, didn’t greet her as I usually do, so as not to alarm the bird. Its eyes have white around them, and the eyelids come together in the middle when it shuts its eyes, more from the bottom than from the top. Quite suddenly it stretched, fanned its tail, bowed forward, and turned its back to me. It’s looking out at the world now, still standing, mostly relaxed, but I would guess its nap is mostly over now. Or not. It pooped just as the mail woman passed. And now it’s down on the grass, looking for food again.

What’s the life of a robin like? It doesn’t have a hundred years to look forward to, or back on; it lives quickly with quick reflexes. But perhaps it feels just as long as my life does to me. A few seasons, full of sunlight and rain, worms and insects and seeds and the lack of same.

At that it seems a slower, more deliberate bird than the sparrows that next came and went. Two sparrows, a male and a female, flitted in, rested momentarily, and flitted onward. Their lives must be truly short, in human years; but who’s to say they’re not just as long in absolute time. They pack so much into their whirlwind lives.