Eggless nests and future possibilities

Lately there's this strange lull in my life.  A quietness, a fresh stillness that rises in the heat of the morning.  A little pocket of time that I fill with small longings and long walks wondering.  I need to get some things done.    I know that, yet I am still wandering. My hands always, always busy, making, forever making.  My thoughts hovering and gliding.  Around and around it goes on this warm summer day.

I discovered a hummingbird nest on my front sidewalk the other morning.  It was so light and so very fragile. Usually the nests hang tight onto the tree limbs, eroding by autumn into little lumps of debris.  Somehow this one floated down and I recognized it for what it was. A bowl of spinning grasses and alyssum, bits of dryer lint woven in between and a little white feather.
Nests connotes many things, but not so much of summer days slowly spinning shorter. I know, for some, nests symbolize comfort, home and security.  Family.  For me, during summer, nests are containers that hold the future past and the possibilities. Still spiraling, still weaving a life of breath and beauty.  Most nests are empty now, some still hidden behind tree leaves or drying reeds.  The maker defined by weft and warp.  Of mud and style.  Of little concern (dove) or great care (robin.)


The world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome, dubious eggs, called possibilities. ~George Elliot

So here I sit making my little clay nests with less ability than a robin and with more care than a dove. On this quiet, not so exciting, lulling summer day.


Comments

  1. Your nests are wonderful - not an easy task - to build a nest. A rewarding task and I love your description of these hot summer days filled with busy hands and hopes and possibilities . . .

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    1. Hello Judy---I love watching different birds making nests. We have doves that quickly make little messy nests (something like my studio) and then the robins- theirs deep, neatly tucked and spiraled (unlike my mind.) We also get the cliff swallows here in summer and they build these wonderful, mud colonies under the eaves of high buildings to the great dismay of many---because poop is still poop and follows the laws of gravity :)

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  2. Replies
    1. Thank you...Birds are very inspiring and watching them making their nests in the spring a wonderful sight as well as the empty nests of summer...

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  3. Hw wonderful you found the nest; strange that it fell to earth but fortuitous as well. You've reminded me I once found a nest when we lived by Mt. Lassen and it was woven with moss and twigs and lichen and all; I still have that nest in a little tin; I may have to get it out and look at it again, your description of the way the birds weave the nests has me curious to look at it again. Your words and nests are very inspiring.

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    1. That nest sounds so beautiful! Mt. Lassen area is so wild and remote. You have lived in some beautiful places! We've camped at Summit Lake many times and hiked up that mountain, too. (Trudged more like it:)
      And those glorious, bubbling, stinky mud pots!

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  4. The nests are really lovely..so delicate and natural looking. Are they raw clay in the photos or smoke-fired by the way?

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    1. They are raw porcelain with black stain added. You have given me a thought about smoke-firing them! I haven't done any smoke-firing in a long time. I might try that, too. Thanks!

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