Just before the sun rose over the Lake I heard,”Roger, you better come downstairs. You've got to see this."

I figured it would be a bird. Two giant pine trees frame our garage. Bustling and chattering bird condos. All the colors, both tropical rainbow travelers and tiny brown chickadees and sparrows who blend right in and become part of the rhythm of the city. Chirping visitors who stop to visit us here in Chicago on their way to warm and distant lands.

Figured it might also be a dead bird.

The grey November winds howling as if even they didn't know any answers. And what's been happening a lot is that the birds, who use the big lake to point their way south, have been blown off course even more than usual.

Dead birds on the lawns, the sidewalks and in the streets.

Add to that the slow down in city services that clean the streets---because the city like everyone else is running out of money. So you see it a lot.

“Is it a possum or raccoon?” I yelled. “No.

” Not a coyote or deer? 

“It’s something we’ve never seen before” she answered. Motioning me over to our back kitchen window---she pointed outside to the ground in the very center of our little lawn. There on the brutally cold, November grass of our back lawn; were the remnants of a makeshift bed.  

Stained pillow pulled from some dumpster. Scraggly thin blanket that couldn’t have kept our nameless traveler warm; and some assorted rags used to cover up against that same wind that kept blowing the birds into the high-rises and the houses. 

While we were warm inside our little house last night . . . while all the winds were blowing and all those birds were smacking into buildings and collapsing to the ground----somebody had spent the night on our back lawn. 

The pillow still showing the indentation of where this wandering soul of the dark alleys had finally laid their weary head down for the night. The back gate was swinging open to the alley---our visitor perhaps having left as dawn broke.  

Putting on my work gloves and grabbing a large plastic garbage bag to collect the remnants of the makeshift bed and deposit them in our trash can: I couldn’t help but wonder where our visitor was right now. Or where he would be later that day when I was worrying about things like picking up a suit at the dry cleaners.

I wondered if he was hungry.

Did he have a job?  Did he have shoes? 

In the pile of clothes I found one boot.

I tossed the bag of his bed clothes, including that one boot,  into my trash can. 

Offering my backyard guest, wherever he was now, my wish, 

A suggestion. One that had just been offered me by someone else, someone I admire a lot---so maybe what would be best would be to pass it along to my backyard guest.

A suggestion. 

Just for today: 

Have no fear.