Cacophony of Coos...

Around five-thirty each morning three planets can be seen over the Sigler's roof next door. I doubt that the Siglers know this and am acutely aware that they have nothing to do with the alignment of the planets, HA, but I digress.

Hanging like jewels against a purple sky, one just above the other on a silver strand, I am reminded of the Trinity, and I sit and pray without words.

Framed by the silvery-green branches of the big mulberry tree, they twinkle and shimmer right up unto the dawn when their sparkly ancient lights are overtaken by the tilting of the planet  towards the sun.

Some sort of bubbling banter builds while the dawn comes up, as those planets fade from view.

I wish I was a better ornithologist so I'd know what species burbles animatedly, like soprano bubbles, breaking forth intermittently into streams of soprano bubbles. I observed two bubblers exiting their lofty mulberry porch, chittering as they relocated to the big oak when Shiloh and I ventured out into the soft dark.

Pitted against the bubbly-squeaks of the treetop inhabitants came a series of brayings.

Yep.

To my tea-sipping ears, it's either a bear cub in captivity down the street, a small donkey wishing he were elsewhere, or an old hound whose larynx has given up the ghost -- yet still wanting to howl at will.

I'm hoping it's the hound. HA

Four feet from the patio door, with my little taffy Shiloh on dawn patrol, I felt fairly safe from whatever brayed down the street.

Out on the prairie, while settlers crossed the land, there may have been a dog on patrol, horses who could sense danger, but no patio door. I can't imagine sleeping out in a bedroll ( that hadn't been washed since last year), hoping my children weren't eaten in the night by anything slithering through the grasses, padding by on silent feet, or lying in wait until the campfire dwindled to embers.

Mixing up a batch of muffins whilst musing on these things, I marveled at all the women, pioneers, settlers, peasants through the ages who put together breakfast after those tenuous nights, mixing biscuit dough and baking it over the revived fire, while the dawn came up.

The back door to the kitchen let in a loud burst of dove-ishness as I slid the muffin pan into the oven. Every dove in a two-mile radius burst forth into a lively cacophony of coos and chortles, building and spilling over into the new morning. They'd survived the night, and exuberantly proclaimed their joy together.

I know the settlers heard a similar birdsong every morning as they crossed this nation, bringing it forth from revolution to destiny. I know it gave them courage, as it does me, that we have survived another night, saved from phantom brayings and other imaginings. I know that when birds sing that all is well with their environment, and I take a cue from them that the day will be, has already been, blessed.

Be blessed, my fellow Americans. Be blessed.