Ovenbird

On my morning walk, I found a migrating ovenbird, stunned from impact with a picture window. We stared at each other for awhile--me trying to figure out what kind of bird it was, it trying to figure out which end was up and whether I was going to kill it before it figured everything out.

The ovenbird call is supposed to sound like "teacher teacher teacher." This one wasn't talking, but if it had, its call would have sounded like "Thash aw right. Awl be ohay shooooon."

I stuck around long enough to let it gather its wits, and we both headed off into the cool fall morning.

It's the time of year to toss on a light scarf. In spite of being a garter-stitch scarf, this is one of my favorites. The yarn is such a pain to work with that a dropped stitch inevitably results in ripping back to the beginning. It's such a pain to work with that the yarn has been discontinued. In spite of it being such a pain to work with, I bought three different colorways because the yarn is soft beyond belief.

I'll close with Robert Frost's poem, "Ovenbird," which is all about the coming fall.

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past,
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.