On The Wings of a Dove

 One of my girlfriends asked me recently, "What did you not like about France?" I thought that was a fair question. Since so much of France enfolded me with love, I had to think. My first thought, the gray weather, then the wheels of my hamster cage began to turn.

I noticed in France, there were no songbirds. No colored birds, really no birds. I saw a few crows, the size of small mountain lions, and scattered pigeons around. Counting them as birds?? they are very low on the sweet bird list. I missed my music in the morning, of all my birds. Right now, there is a symphony outside of many varieties of birds. I close my eyes, and listen. That was missing in France, and that silence, I heard.

When My Ward died, nature became louder and more beautiful. The very busy lives of birds, all around me, was a balm to my heart.

I found in my favorite grief book, this Saturday morning, a tiny thought written by Terry Tempest Williams.
-I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward. I pray to them
-because I believe in their existence, the way their songs begin and end each day. The invocations
-and benedictions of earth. I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what
-I fear. And at the end of my prayers, they teach me how to listen.

I was so starving for birds, that when we stopped outside Strasbourg, I heard a rooster that would not stop crowing. So I went looking, there was a chicken man, beside our hotel, with the most beautiful vegetable garden and chickens galore. Bill said to me, "Where are you going?" since we were headed into the hotel to check in. " I have a chicken man I need to talk to!"
" Bonnie, he speaks not a word of English."
" Well, love is a universal language, and I can point, so leave me alone to converse with some nature!" and
" Where the hell is my camera!"
" You are taking pictures of chickens in France?"
" Yes I am, you are looking at a very happy person!!!"

France was good to me!