another bird story

I planted a banksia tree next to the verandah here. This was many years ago now - not long after my mother died. The seedling  grew and when after a few years it was a spindly tree a metre or so high, a bird made her nest in it. Soon there were three eggs.

One sunny spring day as I was pottering about inside folding laundry, the mother bird flew right into the house through the open double doors. She circled once around my head and flew out again. I followed her outside and saw that her babies had hatched.

Alas, this story has a sad ending. The chicks did not survive. They vanished overnight a few days later.  

And fifteen years later the banksia tree, which is now  thick-trunked, ten metres high and holding up one end of the clothes line,  is dying. I don’t know why. I’d imagined  us growing old together, that tree and me. It would be scattering it’s dappled shade and bristly yellow flowers over the verandah where I sat peacefully in my old lady rocking-chair, meditating upon the ocean. The banksia would be still be here after I was gone, with the yellow tail black cockatoos feeding noisily in its branches... 

Life and death seem to arrive so  randomly  sometimes. Just to remind us of impermanence.