Two years ago it was a robins nest in a bush next to our front deck. Recently the nest that grabbed our attention was thick with cardinals. That one was in the larger of two bushes next to the same deck.

This afternoon, Donna and I were sitting on the back deck having a serious talk. The talk was going well ( Productive and cordial, as the diplomats say ). Suddenly I looked up. No particular reason. No sudden movement. No crash of thunder. No lightning. I just looked up.

" Look at that nest! " Donna said.

She had just looked up, too. For no reason. Or, maybe because I had just looked up.

" You took the words right out of my mouth, " I said.

The nest was huge. Big as a suitcase. Stuck in a crotch near the top of a tall oak tree, just to the left of the evergreen we call " My father's tree. " That's the tree we planted the year he died. It was a tiny then. More like a bush than a tree. Three feet tall. Now it rises twenty feet above the backyard.

The nest in the oak was huge. How could we have missed it? How could we have spotted it at exactly the same time? Those are rhetorical questions to which there are no answers.

What kind of birds live in that nest?

Now there's a question with which we can do business. We'll be aiming the binoculars skyward in the next few days, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever's up there. And the birds?

I'm sure they'll be looking down at us, too. Wondering who we are. What we do.

Here's a clue. We're human. And, among the things we do is talk...

And every now and then, we look up...