TODAY'S BIG QUESTION

HOW IN THE WORLD?

When I look out from my table on the porch, I can see a panorama that opens between the wall of my house, to my left, and the wall of my neighbor’s house about 30’ to my right. Raising my eyes a bit I see an arc of trees against the sky that probably measures 60-80 yards across, beginning above the roof of my house and ends far beyond the wall of my neighbor’s. 

Because it’s winter and all the tree trunks and limbs and branches are bare of leaves, I just watched a squirrel run through the maze of them, from one edge of my field of view to the other – RUN! – without hesitation or pause or consideration – through the 3-dimensional tangle of branches of 9 or 10 different trees using everything from large limbs to feather thin twig-ends that sagged under its weight and sprang back into place once it had leaped on to the next installment of its saga, crossing from one side to the other in less than 20 seconds.

And it didn’t stop! It just ran out of sight beyond my neighbor’s house. It could be in Oklahoma by now!

So, here comes the question: How in the world?

Actually, it’s several questions.

What is the primary ability that enabled it? Visual/motor coordination? Muscle to weight ratio? Ability to identify its path?

Does it know where it wants to go and the path sort of lights up, like Google Maps? Or does it just take that first leap and go where the path leads?

Then, back to the biggest question of all – How does it do it? How does it not end up at some point hanging by its tiny toes from some creaking twig far above the ground and nowhere to go? How? How? How?

I’ve watched squirrels do this many times. Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall. Sometimes two squirrels put on a slightly different but nearly as awesome display, chasing one another through the canopy. I think of it as play. Every time I see it, no matter what the form, I’m astounded, and at least briefly, the litany of questions above runs through my mind.

I’ve never seen a mishap, either. Never seen one fall from the trees after taking a wrong turn down a dead-end branch or leaping on a too brittle limb and come crashing down. It must happen but I’ve never seen it. You can go online and watch parkour - the closest human equivalent - also awe inspiring and mind blowing. But very close at hand are hours of excruciating fails, along with hours of practice and repeated falling. Squirrels? Not so much. I actually found a few videos of squirrels falling from trees. But it was, literally, just a few.

Just to be honest about everything though, other than this one truly remarkable quality – I’m not a fan. I actually almost hate the little gangsters. They are pests, and they constantly attack my bird feeders. They could care less about the birds! All they want to do is eat! In the laziest possible way! Any one of them would eat an entire 25-pound bag of birdseed by themselves if they could just get at it.

When they’re not marauding birdfeeders, they prowl around all the edges of the house trying to break in. I’m not sure why, probably to have their babies, or get warm, or cool off, have a drink and a bite to eat, or maybe just trash the place. Whatever. And when they’re not up to either of those two things, they’re running around like crazy in the trees.  Which, I also have to admit, I sometimes find irritating, in addition to inspiring my awe. Gangsters shouldn’t be having that much fun.

Bill Jeffers
1/28/2022

Some of you may actually have answers or insights to these pressing questions. I hope you’ll share them with us with a comment.

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Even though they are more like strolls around a park than squirrels running through the trees, here are three poems for your consideration.

DESTINATION

Most mornings I sit out here with my cup of coffee, 
pen and notebook and the newspaper, and watch
the birds that come from the bushes and out of the dark trees
to eat from the feeders at the edge of the yard while the day begins.

The morning cars hiss down the neighborhood street 
one by one, each on their way to their own 
mysterious individual destination.

The overhead planes fly their rows 
of strangers seated so, side-by-side, 
shoulder-to-shoulder close on their separate ways 
known only to them each one by one – 
the places they will go, streets they will travel, 
faces they will see, the names they will say out loud,
hands they will touch, all playing inside them each.
Some wondering, some worrying, some wanting.
Time creeping for some, pulling too quickly for others. 
Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, row upon row.

While, folded through the pages of the paper on the table, 
reports of people hidden in the inky headlines 
enduring one catastrophe after another 
fire, flood, famine, or one of the many kinds of war.
Always far away people, strangers, not-quite-people people, 
struggling one by one by one to reach someplace safe,
column after column, page after page.

Till there is no other place it seems to make any sense to look 
except the birds feeding every morning with the sun coming up, 
with the traffic hissing down the street, 
and the airplanes passing overhead,
and the fan stirring the humid morning air.

Bill Jeffers 
9/12/2021

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The following piece was written about a year into the pandemic, as we were beginning to venture out in public once again.

THE WIDE WORLD

We walked across the too familiar room, opened the door,
over the threshold, and out.

The wind blew against us. It smelled clean and from far away.
Blue sky flowed like rivers between low clouds ballooning over the city.
Chimes hanging in trees and from the eaves of houses rang welcome. 
The soft day flowing, called us, and the song it sang, so lovely, strange,
so different from the still room we had become so used to 
pulled us, all day, along the pathway beside the stream – 
the birds calling, we didn’t know their names – 
and through the streets between the buildings –  
people we had never seen before going on their ways,
hidden, like us, in the mystery of their lives. 
We didn’t know their names.

These crossing paths, this weaving life loomed around us:
the room, the door, the threshold – out – 
inside the breathing air, beside the stream, along the streets, 
the wind, the birds, the people, us, we, she, he, me, you, it, they, thee –
all these single threads among the many, here in the wide world.

Bill Jeffers
3/1/2021

Photo by Geoffroy Hauwen on Unsplash

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THE DAYS

O, if I had only known, I say.
I would have spent them much more wisely— 
the days— which lay behind me now, strewn like pennies 
scattered from a bulging purse 
without the thought that they could ever 
all be spent.

I hold the last few in my hand and feel their weight.
The heft of possibility they hold. 
How precious they could be. Or how paltry.

Much of what they will become will happen 
by the simple turning of the earth
	and what that brings my way. 
Much has been determined by the ways I spent the days before:
 	the weight of way too many wasted hours against
	the love I tended to and grew.
The rest of what there is to come is mine to make 
	with what I have to spend and do.

01/19/2022
Bill Jeffers

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One last thing. If you’ve been enjoying JUST NOW, I hope you’ll take just a minute and think of friends on your email list who might also enjoy it. You can pass it on to them by clicking the SEND button. I’d really appreciate your help spreading the word about JUST NOW.

Take care, my friends. Thanks for reading all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed it!
-Bill