Today we drove out to Northeast to get our affairs in order. We've been kicking this particular can down the road for thirty years, but the shadows are beginning to lengthen. On the way home we saw two pigeons on the steaming asphalt of Hondo Pass. One was dead. The other stood close to the body -- motionless -- and didn't flutter out of the path of our car until the last possible moment. Both of us knew immediately that they were mates. It was heartbreaking. We didn't say much the rest of the drive home. Not about projected scenarios of our deaths or about those two poor birds. But a line from an old Hank Williams song keeps going through my mind: "Like a bird that's lost its mate in flight / I'm alone and oh, so blue tonight..."
22 July 2018
