Ten Minutes

I had ten minutes this morning before I needed to leave the house.   What to do?

I'll sit by the front window and see what happens.

The pre-dawn light is soft and dim.  High up in the trees the leaves flutter and flow with the breeze.

Birds are singing - cardinals and cat birds.

A squirrel runs along a high, but thick, oak branch.

Two birds flash into view from the side of the house.  One after the other, like two racers in an air show, they zoom across the street and disappear around the corner of a house, under the car port.

I look down to take a note, and when I look up, they are racing towards me, across the lawn and back around the side of the house.

Just after 6 am, a bank of high clouds emerges from the flat sky as sunlight kisses the eastern edge.

More birds flit around in the trees across the street.

I hear the distant roar of a jet.

It's time to leave.

As I walk up the street I see and hear a cardinal sitting on a wire, calling out his territory.  Down the street, on another wire, sits the denizen of the next territory down, and up the street a bit I hear a third.

I stand for a few moments and watch the beautiful puffs of clouds lighting up in the morning sun.