Through My Window

This is my first published work of fiction, and it appears in the latest issue of The Quotable (December, 2016).  It’s a “flash” piece, and it was inspired by a writing prompt given by Allyson Latta in her last Costa Rican workshop.  It seems my persistence is paying off, because another short nonfiction piece has been picked up by Junto Magazine (forthcoming issue), and a brief memoir piece made it into Oasis Journal 2016.  I hope you enjoy “Through My Window,” which begins below.

Through my window I watch robins feed their young in the nest they have built under the eaves of the verandah.  The window faces the forest, and is low and wide enough to give me an ample view from my bed.

The robins are industrious.  Every three minutes (I have timed this) one of them lands on the verandah rail with a bug in its beak and, checking to be sure neither of the cats is lounging on the deck, glides quickly up to the nest to feed one of the three nestlings.  I can’t see the nestlings – it’s too dark up there in the corner – but Rosa has assured me there are three.

Lying here, I have become more attuned to the subtleties of the changing Costa Rican seasons.  Spring:  the robins, along with countless others, build nests and rear their young.  The forest resounds with a symphony of birdsong.  Summer: the cicadas screech so loudly in the torpor of the afternoons, it’s hard to sleep.  Fall: the berries on the uruca tree next to the verandah, just feathery light-green buds in summer, turn bright red, and the noisy little green parrots spend two entertaining weeks in that tree eating everything in sight and making a huge social fuss.  Read More

Copyright © Sandra Shaw Homer, 2016

Photo by SSH