Leaves fallen
Birds departed
An empty nest
Exposed.

As I watch from the stillness of an empty room
On a lonesome grey silent late fall afternoon
Dancing in random choreography
In and out and about this dark tree
The season’s first snowflakes appear
The nest’s only occupants for the rest of the year.

And I wonder
Will I be standing here next spring
To see the tree renew
And hear the chirping birds return
To raise another brood?

Just one more spring will do, I think.
Yes, one last spring will do.

The image I tried to convey in this poem is the sad story of an old man whose children have grown up and left to live their lives in some other, distant place, and whose wife has died, leaving him alone in a house that used to hold his bustling family.  This past spring and summer, he enjoyed watching a covey of birds living in a tree outside his window.  But now, they too have gone.  He is truly alone for perhaps the first time in his life.  And he wonders if his own life’s work is now complete…if there’s anything left for him in this world.  

The ” lonesome grey silent late fall afternoon” refers not just to the environment outside his window, but to the state of his own affairs at this time in his life.   In the end, he vows to live on for a while longer, to see one more family return to the nest left exposed to the elements in the tree outside his picture window.

There is, in fact, a small tree next to the sidewalk in front of my own house. And, indeed, it holds an abandoned bird’s nest, nestled in a fork of branches. When I see this nest in winter, I think of a time just a few months ago, when the nest was hidden by all the leaves of this small tree and I remember hearing the chirping birds and fluttering leaves as they flitted from branch to branch, raising their rambunctious family. But the abandoned nest in winter makes me consider what it might be like for me, as an old man in the late fall or winter of my life, to be left alone in my own once-bustling house, with my life’s work done, nothing left to do, and no one left to care. It’s perhaps the fear of finding myself in that kind of situation that leads me to think mindfully, to appreciate what I have, now, in the life I lead today.  Whenever I pass this nest, I like to recite the first stanza of this poem .  This is a small haiku, or “gatha”, that reminds me to think mindfully.

Another thing that inspired me to write this short poem is that the last of our three children is about to graduate from high school and leave Tracy and I with an empty nest of our own. We look forward to (and often talk about) the quiet times to come, and we look forward to some deserved relaxation after the day-to-day hectic schedules of the past couple decades. We’ve tried the best way we knew how to raise three of the finest children anyone could hope for. Although we look forward to the peace and quiet, I know we’ll wish for the hustle and bustle and hope for a day when our family might return to someplace near home, to raise families of their own, or just to celebrate a few Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays together.

I often find it difficult to cherish the present, but the mindful message this poem is meant to convey is this: Don’t spend your life waiting for some magical time in the future when things will be so much better than today. When that day finally comes, you’re likely to wish for the happy days gone by. So live today and every day with the thought that no day is, or will be, better than this day. Find the joy and happiness that’s present, in some way, in every day of your life.