"In the last two days I have watched mynas gathering
materials for their nests.
Yesterday I saw one pick up and carry off
a big clump of dried grass.
And then I saw another struggling
with a big piece of napkin at the side of the road.
Such optimism, beloveds, such optimism.
We went to the beach yesterday not in optimism
but in avoidance and spoke about the birds around us
and their constant singing of small songs, some of them
ugly to us and some of them beautiful.
We were just talking because we could.
Because we could spend this time together in the sun
and we knew that was something that mattered
but as we spoke of bird song we also spoke of Bush's summit
Sunday with the leaders of Britain, Spain and Portugal
in the Azores, and the prediction
that there was a less than one percent chance of avoiding war.
When we spoke of birds and their bowers and their habits of nest
we also spoke of the Israeli military bulldozer that
ran over Rachel Corrie, the mysterious flu that
appeared in Hong Kong and had spread
by morning to other parts of Asia,
Elizabeth Smart's return, and Zoran Djindjic's death.
We reclined as we spoke and we reclined and the sand that
coated our arms and legs is known for a softness that
is distinctive in the islands and the waves were
a gentle one to three feet and a soft breeze
blew over through the ironwoods and we were surrounded
by ditches, streams, and wetland areas,
which serve as a habitat for endangered water bird species.
There are other sorts of beauty on this globe,
but this sort of beauty is fully realized here.
This sort of beauty cannot get any more beautiful,
any more detailed, any more rich or perfect.
But the beach on which we reclined
is occupied by the US military so every word we said
was shaped by other words, every moment of beauty occupied.
We watched the planes fly overhead
from the nearby airbase as we spoke of birds and their bowers
and their habits of nest and we were also
speaking of rolling start and shock and awe
and two hundred and twenty five thousand American forces
and another ninety thousand on the way and twenty five
thousand British forces and one thousand Air Force, Navy
and Marine Corps combat and support aircraft in the area.
And because the planes flew overhead when we spoke
of the cries of birds our every word was an awkward squawk that
meant also AH-64 Apache attack helicopter,
UH-60 Black Hawk troop helicopter,
M2A3 Bradley fighting vehicle, M1A1 Abrams main battle tank,
F/A-16 Hornet fighter/bomber, AV-8B Harrier fighter jet,
AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter and that soon would
mean other things also, the names of things still arriving,
the B-2 stealth bombers from Whiteman Air Force Base,
the B-52 bombers that are now in Britain."