“journeyed” by devi laskar

The dog and I enter the park the same way every day and we both like to nose around the new things that come up. We always enter on the corner of Washington and Dekalb, going through the stone and wrought iron entry that flanks the front gardens. The dog always finds something there to sniff and raise his leg for. I always walk up the short incline to the left, walking along the breadth of the park instead of going into its depths.

Our path follows, for a time, the long wide ribbon of grass, dirt, wood chips and trees next to the outer wall. In the fall, there are deep beds of brown, long pine needles there, and long pine cones. In spring, there are occasional gold or purple crocuses and yellow daffodils.

Last week was the third week of June, and in the middle of the week, almost immediately after reaching the top of the incilne, I saw a rare, dull brown lady robin pecking at the ground with a red-vested gentleman robin. I glanced around. There must be babies. What do I know about when robins build nests? Where were the babies? I wanted to find them and tell people about it.

Suddenly, Mr. Robin took off in a straight line to a tree with masses of small green leaves. I stopped, tried to peer in to catch the branch Mr. Robin must have landed on, but I couldn’t. Not even on tiptoe. But I calmed down a minute and heard chirps clanging.

I exhaled. You just have to take your stories where you find them.

Melanie Lee is working on something that is either fiction or memoir. She’ll figure it out soon. She blogs at [email protected]. She’s been a member of BWW for about two years.