bird's nest – Page 4 – Barnstorming

Stirred for a Bird

July 14, 2013 barnstormingblog1 Comment

photo by Kate Steensma — photo of a young kestrel falcon by Kate Steensma

The Windhover
To Christ Our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins

Featherless Hope

May 29, 2013 barnstormingblog1 Comment

“Hope” is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—

…And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird…
~Emily Dickinson from Poem 254

The end of the school year is the season of barely feathered hope in my world. The academic nest is crowded, the competition fierce, the future uncertain. Those who have struggled to survive in classes, in debt, in relationships, in a tenuous job market, can find themselves ill equipped and unprepared to fly on their own. Their lack of feathering becomes obvious the closer they get to the edge. Bashed and abashed, they worry and panic, sleep little, self-medicate, cry easily, contemplate death. Sometimes they tumble.

We try to catch them before they fall.

We remind them: it takes only one feather to have hope in a soaring future of grace and strength. Only one.

The others will come.

And when they do, they will be beautiful.

Brooding Over a Bent World

May 3, 2013 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins from “God’s Grandeur”

This morning springs in beauty, in hope for a new day and I am grateful again for another chance.

That could be me bent and broken on the hard ground, as defenseless as the baby swallows tumbling helpless out of their crowded and soiled nests in our barn rafters, left to die cold and featherless and alone.

Thank God for His brooding breast keeping me safe. Thank God I am still in the nest waiting to test my wings.

It Sings

April 11, 2013 barnstormingblog2 Comments

The roofs are shining from the rain,
The sparrows twitter as they fly,
And with a windy April grace
The little clouds go by.

Yet the back yards are bare and brown
With only one unchanging tree–
I could not be so sure of Spring
Save that it sings in me.
– Sara Teasdale, April

Here we are, closing in on mid-April and it has been a week of heavily drifting snowstorms in the plains, tornado weather in the south, and blustering wind and rain in the northwest. I am not so sure of Spring nor is anyone else.

Yet it sings in me. Yes it sings.

The calendar does not lie, nor does my nose. The pollen counts are rising despite the rains and as I step outside in early dawn, I can catch the slightest fragrance of just-opening cherry and apple blossoms in the orchard. Within a week there will be sweet perfume in the air everywhere and the fruit trees become clothed in white puffy clouds of blossom before bursting full into green.

In defiance of the calendar, our oak trees cling stubbornly to their brown bedraggled fall leaves as if ashamed to ever appear naked, even for a week. In May they will go straight from brown to green without a moment of bare knobby branches.

Even so, it sings in me. Yes it sings.

A morning bird symphony tunes up ever earlier including the “scree” and chatter from bald eagles high up in the fir trees surrounding our house. Nesting has begun despite the wet and cold and wind because their nest is the secure home that calls them back, again and again, year after year.

Like them, it sings in me. Yes it sings.

I rise opening like a bud, I dress my nakedness to cover up my knobbiness, I wander about outside exulting in the free concert, I manage to do chores despite the distractions — this routine of mine which is so unchanging through the calendar days becomes glorious gift and privilege.

Hopefulness sings in me in Spring. Yes it sings.

Late February Days

February 23, 2013 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that
Winter’s woe was past;
So fair the sky was and so soft the air.
The happy birds were hurrying here and there,
as something soon would happen…
– William Morris from Earthly Paradise

We’ve had a pair of bald eagles who return every winter to our hilltop farm. They like the high perches offered by our tall Douglas fir trees providing them a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside and fields. I suspect their nest is nearby, if not in our woods. They were back today, full of conversation and gossip, chittering back and forth like a couple of sparrows, only much louder and much much bigger/grander. The regular inhabitants of our fir trees — crows and red-tailed hawks — are quite put out at the encroachment of eagles on their territory. They fly about the trees angrily, with scolding and harassing calls.

But the eagles reign wherever they set down talons. There is simply nothing to argue about. My only worry about having them in the yard is how vulnerable our cats might be when the wild bunny pickings get thin. Otherwise I appreciate the eagles for the good neighbors they are. They keep the rodent population under control, they are polite and don’t throw raucous parties at night, and they have a stable long term marriage, something I deeply respect.

So when their chirpy dialogue quiets down for the night and the hoot owls start in, I think about how much I always miss all this conversation during the silent nights of deep winter. Happy birds are back, a truly hopeful sign that we are passing into spring, and something soon will happen…

Bereft of Birdsong

January 7, 2013 barnstormingblog2 Comments

Silence and darkness grow apace, broken only by the crack of a hunter’s gun in the woods. Songbirds abandon us so gradually that, until the day when we hear no birdsong at all but the scolding of the jay, we haven’t fully realized that we are bereft — as after a death. Even the sun has gone off somewhere… Now we all come in, having put the garden to bed, and we wait for winter to pull a chilly sheet over its head.
~Jane Kenyon from “Good-by and Keep Cold”

Every day now we hear hunters firing in the woods and the wetlands around our farm, most likely aiming for the few ducks that have stayed in the marshes through the winter, or possibly a Canadian goose or a deer to bring home for the freezer. The usual day-long symphony of birdsong is replaced by shotguns popping, hawks and eagle screams and chittering, the occasional dog barking, with the bluejays and squirrels arguing over the last of the filbert nuts.

In the clear cold evenings, when coyotes aren’t howling in the moonlight, the owls hoot to each other across the fields from one patch of woods to another, their gentle resonant conversation echoing back and forth. The horses confined to their stalls in the barns snort and blow as they bury their noses in flakes of summer-bound hay.

But there is no birdsong arias, leaving me bereft of their blending musical tapestry that wake me at 4 AM in the spring. No peeper orchestra from the swamps in the evenings, rising and falling on the breeze.
It is too too quiet.

The chilly silence of the darkened days is now interrupted by all percussion, no melody at all. I listen intently for early morning and evening serenades returning.
It won’t be long.

Advent Sings: Carried Aloft

December 9, 2012 barnstormingblogLeave a comment

He shielded him and cared for him;
    he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
¹¹like an eagle that stirs up its nest
    and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
    and carries them aloft.
¹²The Lord alone led him;
Deuteronomy 32: 10b-12a from the Song of Moses

³Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ⁴‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. ⁵Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, ⁶you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.”
²⁵So Moses went down to the people and told them.
Exodus 19: 3-6. 25

We live where eagles live. It is a rare day to not see an eagle sitting in the tall firs around our farm, or flying over the river in search of salmon, or circling high above the valley. They command awe and my attention is riveted by their strength and beauty.

The eagle, of all God’s creatures, is used as metaphor by God Himself for the care He feels for His people. The wings of an eagle carry the weight of the world’s cares.

So too, the weight of the world is carried by a baby earth-bound, born in a barn to eventually die on a cross. Either soaring on the wings of eagles, lying helpless in the straw or hanging forsaken on a tree so we are forever forgiven.

That is man, that God is mindful of us.

That is God, wanting us to know He loves us enough to carry us.

…those who hope in the Lord
    will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
    they will run and not grow weary,
    they will walk and not be faint.
Isaiah 40: 31

Welcoming Heart

November 26, 2012 barnstormingblog1 Comment

Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps a singing bird will come–
Chinese Proverb

I need reminding that what I offer from my heart reflects what I will receive there. If I’m grumbling and breaking like a dying vine instead of a green tree, my discouragement entangled by the cobwebs and mildew of worry, then no singing bird will come.

So much better to nurture the singers of joy and gladness with a heart budding green with gratitude, anticipating and expectant.

The welcome mat is out and waiting.

Any time now…

Half Fledged

November 8, 2012 barnstormingblog3 Comments

photo by Emily Gibson, just outside our front door

Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray–
For doubt, and pain, and anger, and all strife.
Yet some poor half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest
May fall, flit, fly, perch–crouch in the bowery breast
Of the large, nation-healing tree of life;–
Moveless there sit through all the burning day,
And on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay.
~George MacDonald from Diary of an Old Soul

There can be no response but to bow in earnest prayer, waiting for the hatch of a healing peace among the diverse peoples and opinions of our nation. Our lives are half-fledged, not yet fully delivered nor understood, doubt burning into our flesh like thorns on fire. We have become an angry and hurting nation– those who won and those who lost. The gloating bloats who we are, beyond recognition.

May our prayers rise like a dove from hearts in turmoil, once again to soar on the wings of eagles.

Peace, come quickly.
Be no longer moveless.
Move us to higher ground.
Plow deep our hearts.

freshleaf — photo of “firethorn” bush (pyracanthus) by Emily Gibson

A Doleful Hymn

November 3, 2012November 4, 2012 barnstormingblog3 Comments

swannov — Photo taken today across the road from our farm- feeding swans amid the cornfield stubble

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,

And now my heart is sore.

All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,

The first time on this shore,

The bell-beat of their wings above my head,

Trod with a lighter tread.
~William Butler Yeats from “The Wild Swans at Coole”

I was working outside before the sun was up this rainy morning, preparing the horse barn for our vet arriving to perform an on-the-farm surgery on one of our Haflinger horses. As I prepared the shavings bedding, feeling anxious about the procedure to take place, I heard sounds overhead that come only a few days a year: the swishing hush of wings in flight and the trumpeter swan “doleful hymn” called out as dozens passed above me in a long meandering line against the early dawn greyness.

The swan flocks predictably arrive in early November to eat their fill, feasting in the harvested cornfields surrounding our farm, their bright white plumage a stark contrast to the dulling muddy soil. And too soon they lift their long graceful necks and fan out their wings to be picked up the wind, leaving us behind and beneath, moving south, heading year after year for their wintering home.

These incredible creatures bring such joy with their annual arrival and brief stay, their leave-taking a harbinger for this dying time of year, reminding me once again nothing on earth can last.

“‘Tis strange that death should sing…” but in fact, ’tis strange that death should fly in and out on silken wings.

I give myself over to their beauty, and walk with lighter tread, singing a new song.

I am grateful my sore heart still soars.

‘Tis strange that death
should sing.
I am the cygnet to this pale faint swan,
Who chants a doleful hymn to his own death,
And from the organ-pipe of frailty sings
His soul and body to their lasting rest.
~William Shakespeare from The Life and Death of King John

The swan, like the soul of the poet,
By the dull world is ill understood.
~Heinrich Heine

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