The Brush Pile

                                                                                                          2/14/26 6am

We should have burned it years ago, when it was just a pile of rusted springsm and burned out tree limbs.

“It’s too close to the house.“  We don’t have a hose.”  “It’s too far from the water spigot”  “This is No Burning season.” “We didn’t get a permit.”   All excuses to burn the pile.

Then the building project started.  “Pile it over there?” yelled the boy laden with scrap pieces, trudging toward the pile. And so, the pile accumulated oddball shapes and sizes of scrap wood.  

Next the excess brush from cleaning up the yard found its way into the pile; various weeds began sprouting up from within and along the edges sending long willowy tendrils to poke at the mowers, the pile swelling more and more each year. One long piece of baseboard molding juts out from the pile, the weeds gently rocking in the light breeze.

Suddenly a loud melodious long song erupts from the top of the molding. Hard to see in the gray overcast morning, the small bird blends in with the colors of the pile, now a conglomeration of greys, browns, and beiges, dusted at the bottom with some misplaced used kitty litter and pine pellets.

The birds here in the south sing a different song from the New England birds. I ponder. Why do birds sing? Is it only to call for a mate? Or is it something that they can’t help, like a cat’s purr.

I listen quietly straining to hear a muffled high pitched chirpy conversation from the depths of the pile, of baby birds twittering from the deep within its recesses,

I sit very still, watching.  The songbird  has abandoned its perch.  There, is that it on the ground?  The dark hollows of the pile seem to reflect movement.  I strain to see not one but several tiny replicas bouncing on the grass just at the edge of that dark area. Wait, is that dark area a doorway into the pile?

Can’t burn the pile now. 

What looks to some like an unsightly tribute to fear, neglect and poor timing is…  a home.