Thursday, April 21, 2011
Free at last
As my spiritual guide, the Dr. Martin Luther King, has so profoundly said: Free at last, Free at last, Thank God almighty, I'm free at last. Burst from the chains that have bound me, I look around at this marvel of creation and my heart swells with awe. Put another way, Spring is sprung, and the peepers are peeping, returning song birds are singing, the dogwood blossoms are open and ready for love. Today, the first Hummingbird arrived, just as the feeders went up, and the nectar is now officially flowing. The dogs of winter have been washed in the new water of mud and exuberance. The red buds have done it again, and the floods have been quelled for now. The wood-peckers are pounding away on the soft wood of rotten cavities, making way for eggs and the season of avian romance is coming close. Can the warblers be far behind?
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I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
ReplyDeleteMy grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.
- Roethke