It sounded like a chest of drawers being tipped over, but it turned out to be the more likely crashing down of a limb, and there it was crippled on the lawn in the morning after the storm had passed.

One day you may notice a chip on a vase or an oddly shaped cloud or a car parked at the end of a shadowy lane, but what I noticed that summer day from a reading chair on the small from porch

was a sparrow who appeared out of nowhere, as birds often do, then vanished into the leafy interior of the fallen limb as if it were still growing from the tree, budding and burgeoning like all the days before.

Toward evening, two men arrived with a chainsaw and left behind only a strewing of sawdust and a scattering of torn leaves before driving off in their green truck. But earlier, I had heard chirping

issuing from inside the severed appendage as if nothing had happened at all, as if that bird had forever to sing her little song. And that reminded me of St. Denis, the third century Christian martyr,

who reacted to his own decapitation by picking his head up from the ground, after it tumbled to a stop, of course, and using it to deliver to the townspeople what turned out to be his most memorable sermon.