Sue O'Neill

. . . and it was on politics and the war in Iraq, and of course I was thinking about all the things that are fucked up about this country, despairing over the mess we're leaving my grandchild-to-be and also worrying a little about my youngest, the bipolar actor, who's just become a Sufi Muslim, and mulling the dull ache of rejection and remainderhood, when suddenly I felt a quick cool wetness on my thigh, and I looked down and there was the biggest splat of birdshit I'd seen in years, and I looked up to see a proudly gorgeous red-winged blackbird flapping up to a high branch of the leaf-lush tree ahead to my left, and a little jeweled yellow finch zigging into the bushes on my right, and beyond it the blue glitter of the Merrimack river and overhead little fluffy cloud pillows hung out in the sun-drenched sky, and I thought . . . hmmm . . . or in the words of the prophet Paul (Simon), in his Gospel of You Can Call Me Al: Hey, Hallelujah.