Keeper Of The Birds

I remember being six or seven and lying on the floor of the sun room of our house on Ball Street letting the beams of sunlight warm my face. I would lay silently, waiting patiently for the moment! The moment when I would hear the thud against the large bay windows my Dad had put in a few years earlier. I remember running outside as fast as my bare feet would take me to find the small lifeless body of a bird laying there. Finding that it was beyond saving, I was ready to perform my duty and give it the burial that I felt, in my seven year old head, it deserved. I would dig deep in the loose soil of our garden with my hands and lay it's fragile little body in the grave, then cover it up leaving one wing protruding from the earth, almost as a salute. I would stand and stare at it for a while wondering what it's little bird life was like. Did it have a bird mommy or daddy or a bird husband that was waiting anxiously for it's return home? I would conclude the burial with the sprinkling of flower petals around the wing and then return to my spot in the sun and wait for the next unknowing victim.