I can hear the sound of water dripping from the trees near my house. The porch steps are wet. The limbs of the Beech tree across my drive are hanging low from the weight of the rain-soaked leaves.

One of the great things about no longer having a work schedule to keep is this. It’s 8:00 in the morning. I’m dressed. I’ve finished my oatmeal. I’ve read for a while. And now I am standing quietly on my kitchen porch just taking in the world as it busies itself with its own order of the day.

I like to lean against the post at the top of the steps. Here I can cradle my coffee cup in both hands without using the handle and slurp slowly. From the top step it always feels like I’m seeing the world from behind a looking glass. As long as I remain on the step, the sounds and the sights are “out there.” I am just an observer.

As soon as I step off the ledge I break through the unseen barrier and become part of the day. Here I can hold back for a while.

The grass is green, its thirst quenched by the rain. The daylilies are standing tall and bright, like a chorus of singers clad in yellow robes. I can almost hear the harmonies of “Oh happy day!”

Two posts to my left there is a bird’s nest perched on the inside top of the post. Mama bird is not happy with my invasion of her world. She chirps at me in harsh tones. “Move on” she says.

When I built this house 25 years ago, I should have boxed in the top of each post to keep the birds from building nests. Eight posts. Four on the side porch and four on the front porch. Every spring I have three or four feathered visitors who set up housekeeping under my roof.

They make a mess. They sometimes fly at my head. They leave gooey gifts on my wooden swing.

But if they weren’t here with me, I’d miss the miracle.

She leaves the nest and darts off into the unknown. When she returns there is a chorus of peeping from little heads below the rim of the nest that I cannot see. She dips her beak into the nest and is gone again.

This time she swoops down to the pavement below the steps where I’m standing. No bigger than a minute, she turns to face me and hops up and down shouting at me. I’m not budging. “You’re not the boss of me,” I tell her, and I stand my ground.

I’m not as observant as I should be. I could study her closely and perhaps learn what kind of bird she is, but I am content with the title “little bird.” I have no plans for becoming a world class ornithologist. The way I see it, I have enough information rattling around in my head as it is already.

Somewhere beyond the edge of the woodland, there is another unseen chorus of sounds. Each voice different and distinct. Loud and piercing. Soft and melodic. I have no idea to whom these voices belong, but in my mind, I try to imagine what they must look like. The owl is the only one I really know. He is the baritone amongst the tenors and sopranos.

It’s early enough that the cicadas are subdued. I can hear just a murmur for the moment, but I know it will become a deafening roar soon enough. I see one flutter across the drive, losing altitude quickly like a wounded duck. He is not as graceful as my feathered friend.

The coffee cup in my hands is still warm. We are having a small break from the heat, so its warmth feels good against the cool air. These are the mornings that deserve to be soaked up before the heat and humidity make it miserable to stand here, even for a short time.

The cicada carcasses are piling up. At the moment, I suspect that their population stats outnumber any other creature in my little woodland world. Thousands. Maybe millions. I don’t know. But the increasing number of lifeless bodies tell me that their time is short.

I had one take a piggy-back ride on my jeans the other day. I looked down to dust off my legs before going inside the house, and there he was. Translucent wings. A black and non-descript face with beady little red eyes. I carefully pinched him between my thumb and index finger. Could have been a “her” I suppose. I looked at the undercarriage but could not distinguish any clear anatomical evidence.

Like the little bird, he chirped at me. It was a weak chirp at best. More like a faint gurrr. “Not so intimidating all by yourself” I thought.

I took him to the top step of the very porch on which I’m standing and gave him a toss. I thought he might take flight and soar. Instead, he tumbled to the bottom step and landed on his back. I was compassionless.

“Die sucker.”

There is so much in this life that I don’t understand. So much that I take for granted. So much more that I could see and appreciate if only I would take the time to look.

Like last Friday night. Marion and I were at FDR State Park. We took a walk at dusk just to stroll and talk. We stopped to talk to guy about his lantern made out of a 5-gallon bucket. One of the young men with him came forward and looked us over.

Speaking to Marion, he asked, “Are you from Palmetto?”

“I am,” she said. “Should I know you?”

He turned to his wife. “See there. I told you it was her.”

Turns out he works in the lawn mower shop where she does business. He a service tech there. His wife loves Marion’s smoked ribs. The older gentleman is the preacher where a close friend of Marion’s attends church. The whole conversation turned into something like a reunion of undiscovered friendships.

Later we watched the sky dance with colors of red and purple. Streaks of light came and went at altitudes I cannot comprehend. I got my buddy on the phone, and he tried to describe to us the magnitude of what we were seeing. Sunspots. Magnetic fields. Solar radiation blasting past the earth.

Like I’m comfortable with “little bird”, I am also comfortable with “northern lights.”

And with all the looking up that we did, we saw the movement of satellites across the backdrop of the universe. I thought maybe I was seeing a UFO when the Starlink chain of satellites came into view, moving silently across the sky like Santa and his massive sleigh of reindeer.

My coffee is turning cold. The day presses on as I finish my thoughts. Birds. Insects. The night sky. Unexpected friends. I marvel at it all, knowing the world waits to be seen and heard with more than just my eyes and ears.

But eyes and ears are a good place to start.