A Small Brush with Greatness

A Small Brush with Greatness

by Kai Siedenburg, author of the Poems of Earth and Spirit series

I had to wait

more than 50 years,

but it finally happened…

a wild bird

landed on me—

or more precisely,

on the edge

of my journal—

but since that journal

was on my lap,

and I had been

writing in it

for most of the morning,

it felt like                     

a part of me.

And when

the pine siskin

swooped down

from a nearby redwood,

landed on

my journal,

and fixed me

with his

intense little gaze,

his bright black eyes

were only a foot away

from my brown ones.

So close!

So close!

Although

he was small in stature

(no more than five inches

from head to tail),

he was

a powerful presence,

a force of nature,

and I knew

in my bones               

that I had experienced

a brush with greatness.