One of the first foggy mornings arrived to signal the late-summer hour. I’d gone out to make a quick perambulation of the backyard and was standing beneath the seven sons flower tree, just beginning its sweet bloom, when I looked down at the pool and saw a shadow and reflection moving across the water.
Well, the sky.
It looked like a pheasant – namesake of the street on which we live, and a bird I’d never seen around here. The longer plumage fluttering behind it tipped me off, as did something extra about the head. Scrambling out from beneath the tree to gain a better look at something more than the reflection, I only saw that it had already disappeared from sight. I stood there in the morning fog, peering into the hazy sky and hoping it would come back, knowing that most birds won’t swoop back because they forgot something.
My gaze returns to the reflections in the pool. When the water is still like this, early in the morning, it becomes like a pane of glass. Sometimes it helps to see a reflection of things to gain a better perspective of what they really are. Is a reflection any less real than what it’s reflecting? Touching the water, one can make it all disappear. More mental contortions for which I’m wholly unprepared, especially this early in the week.
