The terrible sound as he hit the window was so loud that I knew it had broken his neck. We went to the window, and there he lay, a first year white throated sparrow, male. His body was perfectly still on the red tiles. His eyes wide and shocked, he gasped once, twice…and then no more. We stood in silence. It is a terrible thing to stand helpless and watch something beautiful die.

He was tiny and perfect in my husband’s hand. Common and drab from a distance, up close he was an intricate pattern of every shade of brown, his softly streaked breast a watercolor painted by the hand of God. He had no idea as he shot out of my azalea bush that he seconds left to live, that he would never get to do all the things he was so perfectly engineered to do. No taking to the air on the first day of spring, no finding a mate and filling a nest with eggs that become chicks. No perching on a branch with the afternoon sun on his face, singing his song. No more anything. All over in an instant. It cast a pall on an otherwise lovely day and left me feeling inexpressibly sad.

Then the next day, leaving church, I looked down and saw a dandelion improbably growing up through the concrete of the parking lot. Its golden face defiantly turned to the sun. And it too was something beautiful.

There is no profound ending to this, one that clarifies and enlightens, just a reminder that in this life there will be sad, wasted beauty but also improbable, defiant beauty. The world can hold both. It always has. And so can we.