The crust of sleep is broken Abruptly— I look drowsily Through the wide crack. I do not know whether I see Three minds, bird-shaped, Flashing upon the bough of morning; Or three delicately tinted souls Butterflying in the sun; Or three brown-fleshed, husky children Sprawling hilarious Over my bed And me. ~Jeanne D’Orge “Matins”(published in 1917)
This morning I broke through the misty tides of my dreams, surfacing to cool morning air and prelude of a dawn bird chorus.
Today I wake imagining who I might be from a myriad of dreams…
Sometimes I wake as if once again a young girl, sun coming through frilly curtains to shower my face with a warming light.
Sometimes I wake as if once again a sleep-thirsty student, hoping to snooze another 15 minutes before class.
Sometimes I wake once again as if a new mother, dripping and leaking at the sound of my baby’s cries.
Sometimes I wake as if once again a weary farmer, up much of the night with a laboring mare and slow-to-suck foal.
Sometimes I wake as if once again a preoccupied physician, mentally reviewing the night’s phone calls and concerns.
Today I wake as a grandma, wishing my bed would bounce with a pile of birds and butterflies and jubilant children, wishing me good morning and eager to see me up and at ’em.
So who am I?
I was, I am, I will be all those things, as I hang tight to the bough of morning.
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When I was with the green hummingbird, it became the company I didn’t know I needed. We spent our mornings together, and after it went its way, I read and wrote.
…a hummingbird, essential company in the endless journey through dead-ends, restarts, and new beginnings – as well as a reminder of the beauty of the world, the power of the sun, the rain, love, and life, all packed inside the body of a creature that weighs less than an ounce. A sign that within the smallest detail, the whole world is present, and just as the gravity and magnificence of life is present in the mountains, oceans, stars, and everything larger than life, it is also brilliantly present in its smallest bird. ~Zito Madu from “Hummingbirds are Wondrous” in Plough
A hundred thousand birds salute the day:– One solitary bird salutes the night: Its mellow grieving wiles our grief away, And tunes our weary watches to delight; It seems to sing the thoughts we cannot say, To know and sing them, and to set them right; Until we feel once more that May is May, And hope some buds may bloom without a blight. This solitary bird outweighs, outvies, The hundred thousand merry-making birds Whose innocent warblings yet might make us wise Would we but follow when they bid us rise, Would we but set their notes of praise to words And launch our hearts up with them to the skies. ~Christina Rossetti “A Hundred Thousand Birds”
photo by Harry Rodenberger
Birds afloat in air’s current, sacred breath? No, not breath of God, it seems, but God the air enveloping the whole globe of being. It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred, leaves astir, our wings rising, ruffled—but only saints take flight… But storm or still, numb or poised in attention, we inhale, exhale, inhale, encompassed, encompassed. ~Denise Levertov from “In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being”from The Stream and the Sapphire
As if reluctant to let go the setting sun last night, one lone bird still sang a twilight song, long after the others fell asleep, their heads tucked neatly under their wings.
This lone bird had not yet finished with the day, breathing in and out its plaintive melody, articulating my thoughts I could not say.
And before a hint of light this May morning, I am swept from my dreams by a full chorus singing from the same perch, no longer a lone voice, but hundreds.
My day is launched by the warbling songs, but I cannot forget twilight’s one reluctant bird who fought the impending darkness using only its voice.
I too fight back the darkness with what I write here, if I can keep it at bay: inhaling, exhaling, encompassed in Breath. I want to sing out light to Light and live light in Light.
No darkness here.
I hear a bird chirping, up in the sky I’d like to be free like that spread my wings so high I see the river flowing water running by I’d like to be that river, see what I might find
I feel the wind a blowin’, slowly changing time I’d like to be that wind, I’d swirl and the shape sky I smell the flowers blooming, opening for spring I’d like to be those flowers, open to everything
I feel the seasons change, the leaves, the snow and sun I’d like to be those seasons, made up and undone I taste the living earth, the seeds that grow within I’d like to be that earth, a home where life begins
I see the moon a risin’, reaching into night I’d like to be that moon, a knowing glowing light I know the silence as the world begins to wake I’d like to be that silence as the morning breaks
He doesn’t know the world at all Who stays in his nest and doesn’t go out. He doesn’t know what birds know best Nor what I sing about, Nor what I sing about, Nor what sing about: That the world is full of loveliness.
When dew-drops sparkle in the grass And earth is aflood with morning light. light A blackbird sings upon a bush To greet the dawning after night, the dawning after night, the dawning after night. Then I know how fine it is to live.
Hey, try to open your heart to beauty; Go to the woods someday And weave a wreath of memory there. Then if tears obscure your way You’ll know how wonderful it is To be alive. ~Paul Read
Between the March and April line — That magical frontier Beyond which summer hesitates, Almost too heavenly near. The saddest noise, the sweetest noise, The maddest noise that grows, — The birds, they make it in the spring, At night’s delicious close. It makes us think of all the dead That sauntered with us here, By separation’s sorcery Made cruelly more dear. It makes us think of what we had, And what we now deplore. We almost wish those siren throats Would go and sing no more. An ear can break a human heart As quickly as a spear, We wish the ear had not a heart So dangerously near. ~Emily Dickinson“The Saddest Noise”
Every spring I hear the thrush singing in the glowing woods he is only passing through. His voice is deep, then he lifts it until it seems to fall from the sky. I am thrilled. I am grateful. Then, by the end of morning, he’s gone, nothing but silence out of the tree where he rested for a night. And this I find acceptable. Not enough is a poor life. But too much is, well, too much. Imagine Verdi or Mahler every day, all day. It would exhaust anyone. ~Mary Oliver “In Our Woods, Sometimes a Rare Music ” from “A Thousand Mornings”
What does it say about me that a only a few months ago, in the inky darkness of December mornings, I was yearning for the earlier sunrises of spring. Once we’re well into April, the birdsong symphony alarm clock each morning is no longer so compelling.
This confirms my suspicion that I’m incapable of reveling in the moment at hand, something that would likely take years of therapy to undo. I’m sure there is some deep seated issue here, but I’m too sleep deprived to pursue it.
My eyes pop open earlier than I wish, aided and abetted by vigorous birdsong in the trees surrounding our farm house. Daylight sneaks through the venetian blinds. Once the bird chorus starts, with one lone chirpy voice in the apple tree by our bedroom window, it rapidly becomes a full frontal onslaught orchestra from all manner of avian life-forms, singing from the plum, cherry, walnut, fir and chestnut. Sleep is irretrievable.
Yet it would be such a poor life without the birdsong. Even so, too much is … a bit too much.
I already need a nap.
photo by Harry Rodenberger
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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”
The snow piles in dark places are gone. Pools by the railroad tracks shine clear. The gravel of all shallow places shines. A white pigeon reels and somersaults.
Frogs plutter and squdge-and frogs beat the air with a recurring thin steel sliver of melody. Crows go in fives and tens; they march their black feathers past a blue pool; they celebrate an old festival. A spider is trying his webs, a pink bug sits on my hand washing his forelegs. I might ask: Who are these people? ~Carl Sandburg from “Just Before April Came”
And so Spring asks:
Who are these people?
Here we are, closing in on mid-April and our weather continues to be unpredictable. I am not so sure of Spring.
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.
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I wonder if the sap is stirring yet, If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate, If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun And crocus fires are kindling one by one: Sing, robin, sing; I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.
I wonder if the springtide of this year Will bring another Spring both lost and dear; If heart and spirit will find out their Spring, Or if the world alone will bud and sing: Sing, hope, to me; Sweet notes, my hope, soft notes for memory.
The sap will surely quicken soon or late, The tardiest bird will twitter to a mate; So Spring must dawn again with warmth and bloom, Or in this world, or in the world to come: Sing, voice of Spring, Till I too blossom and rejoice and sing. ~Christina Rossetti “The First Spring Day”
A Light exists in Spring Not present on the Year At any other period — When March is scarcely here
A Color stands abroad On Solitary Fields That Science cannot overtake But Human Nature feels.
It waits upon the Lawn, It shows the furthest Tree Upon the furthest Slope you know It almost speaks to you.
Then as Horizons step Or Noons report away Without the Formula of sound It passes and we stay —
A quality of loss Affecting our Content As Trade had suddenly encroached Upon a Sacrament. ~ Emily Dickinson“A Light exists in Spring”
Maybe it is the particular tilt of our globe on its axis, or the suffusion of clouds damp with moisture or perhaps only the winter darkness can no longer overwhelm…
The light of spring as it melts from March into April is immersive with sweet-scented dawn and twilight moments
Surrounded in sacrament without and within, a renewed life lived in the Lord: gently glowing.
Lux, Calida gravisque pura velut aurum Et canunt angeli molliter modo natum.
Light Warm and heavy, pure as gold And the angels sing softly to The just born
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Spring comes quickly: overnight the plum tree blossoms, the warm air fills with bird calls.
In the plowed dirt, someone has drawn a picture of the sun with rays coming out all around but because the background is dirt, the sun is black. There is no signature.
Alas, very soon everything will disappear: the bird calls, the delicate blossoms. In the end, even the earth itself will follow the artist’s name into oblivion.
Nevertheless, the artist intends a mood of celebration.
How beautiful the blossoms are — emblems of the resilience of life. The birds approach eagerly. ~Louise Glück “Primavera”
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning. ~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Spring”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. ” Revelation 21:5
Given a choice, humanity chose sour over the sweetness we were created for ~ giving up walks together in the cool of the day to feed an appetite that could never be sated.
God made a choice to bring us back with His own blood as if we are worthy of Him.
He says we are. He dies to prove it.
Every day I choose to believe earth can be sweet and beautiful again. Each spring becomes a celebration of our resilience.
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…yesterday I heard a new sound above my head a rustling, ruffling quietness in the spring air
and when I turned my face upward I saw a flock of blackbirds rounding a curve I didn’t know was there and the sound was simply all those wings, all those feathers against air, against gravity and such a beautiful winning: the whole flock taking a long, wide turn as if of one body and one mind.
How do they do that?
If we lived only in human society what a puny existence that would be
but instead we live and move and have our being here, in this curving and soaring world that is not our own so when mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives and when, even more rarely, we unite and move together toward a common good,
we can think to ourselves:
ah yes, this is how it’s meant to be. ~Julie Cadwallader Staub from “Blackbirds” from Wing Over Wing
Out of the dimming sky a speck appeared, then another, and another. It was the starlings going to roost. They gathered deep in the distance, flock sifting into flock, and strayed towards me, transparent and whirling, like smoke. They seemed to unravel as they flew, lengthening in curves, like a loosened skein. I didn’t move;they flew directly over my head for half an hour.
Each individual bird bobbed and knitted up and down in the flight at apparent random, for no known reason except that that’s how starlings fly, yet all remained perfectly spaced. The flocks each tapered at either end from a rounded middle, like an eye. Overhead I heard a sound of beaten air, like a million shook rugs, a muffled whuff. Into the woods they sifted without shifting a twig, right through the crowns of trees, intricate and rushing, like wind.
Could tiny birds be sifting through me right now, birds winging through the gaps between my cells, touching nothing, but quickening in my tissues, fleet? ~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly
they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing over buildings,
dipping and rising; they float like one stippled star that opens, becomes for a moment fragmented,
then closes again; and you watch and you try but you simply can’t imagine
how they do it with no articulated instruction, no pause, only the silent confirmation that they are this notable thing,
this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin over and over again, full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, even in the leafless winter, even in the ashy city. I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it;
I feel my boots trying to leave the ground, I feel my heart pumping hard. I want
to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings. ~Mary Oliver “Starlings in Winter” from Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays
Watching a winter starlings’ murmuration is a visceral experience – my heart leaps to see the looping amoebic folding and unfolding path.
Thousands of individual birds move in sync with one another to form one massive organism existing solely because each tiny component anticipates and cooperates to avoid mid-air collisions.
It could explode into chaos but it doesn’t. It could result in massive casualties but it doesn’t. They could avoid each other altogether but they don’t – they come together with a purpose and reasoning beyond our imagining.
Even the whooshing of their wing movements is exhilarating.
We humans are made up of similar cooperating component parts, deep in our tissues, programmed in our DNA. Yet we don’t exercise such unity from our designed and carefully constructed building blocks. We are frighteningly disparate and independent creatures, going our own way, bumping and crashing without care, leaving so much bodily and spiritual wreckage behind.
What has happened to our place in this curving, soaring world? To where has flown our mercy and tenderness, our compassion and caring for the position of others?
We have corporately lost our internal moral compass. Indeed, the sound of our movements is muffled weeping.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Matthew 6: 25-26
This Lenten season I reflect on the words of the 19th century southern spiritual hymn “What Wondrous Love is This”
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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 “The Windhover”
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? ~Mary Oliver from “The Swan”
I hold my heart in hiding, trying to protect that tender core of who I am from being pierced and shredded by the slings and arrows of every day life. It can be a bruising and bumpy ride.
Yet to live fully, as I am created to live, I must fling myself into the open, wimpling wings spread, the wind holding me up, hovering and ready to soar.
To stay aloft, I must change as the wind changes around me.
I take my chances, knowing the fall will come. My wounds shall be healed, even as they bleed.
There is no lack of wonder. So stirred. So much beauty to behold. So much heart to take out of hiding and share freely, no matter the buffeting.
Ah… Ah, my dear.
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The tree, and its haunting bird, Are the loves of my heart; But where is the word, the word, Oh where is the art, To say, or even to see, For a moment of time, What the Tree and the Bird must be In the true sublime?
They shine, listening to the soul, And the soul replies; But the inner love is not whole, and the moment dies.
Oh give me before I die The grace to see With eternal, ultimate eye, The Bird and the Tree. The song in the living Green, The Tree and the Bird – Oh have they ever been seen, Ever been heard? ~Ruth Pitter “The Bird in the Tree”
Then came a sound even more delicious than the sound of water. Close beside the path they were following a bird suddenly chirped from the branch of a tree. It was answered by the chuckle of another bird a little further off.
And then, as if that had been signal, there was chattering and chirruping in every direction, and then a moment of full song, and within five minutes the whole wood was ringing with birds’ music, and wherever Edmund’s eyes turned he saw birds alighting on branches, or sailing overhead or chasing one another or having their little quarrels or tidying up their feathers with their beaks. ~C.S. Lewis from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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 decided to stay in the marshes through the winter, or possibly a Canadian goose or a deer to bring home for the freezer. Our usual day-long serenade of birdsong from the forest is replaced by shotguns popping, hawks and eagles chittering from the treetops, with Stellar jays 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.
During these chilly months, there are no longer birdsong arias in the trees; I’m left bereft of the musical tapestry of chirps and trills and twitters.
So it is too quiet, a time of bereavement. The frosty silence of darkened days, interrupted by gunshot percussion, is like a baton raised in anticipation after rapping the podium to bring us all to attention. I wait and listen for the downbeat to come — the return of birds and peeper frogs tuning their throats, rehearsing their spring symphony.
May their eternal and ultimate concert never end.
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven. ~Emily Dickinson in an 1885letter to Miss Eugenia Hall
Bird in a tree, bird in a tree What you doin’ way up there? Why do you sing, why do you sing? Are you looking for your lady fair? Did she fly away to another tree? Do you know not where she hides? All day you sing the same old song She must be hard to find
[Verse 2] Bird in a tree, bird in a tree What’s it like to be able to fly? I figure if I had wings like you Not a wasted day’d go by I’d fly above the mountaintops I’d do barrel-rolls and dives I’d snack upon the wiggly worms And be happy all my life
[Verse 3] Bird in a tree, bird in a tree What you doin’ way up there? Why do you sing, why do you sing? Are you looking for your lady fair? Did she leave you late in the summertime After such a lovely spring? Are afraid that come the winter You’ll be left in the cold and lonely?
[Verse 4] Bird in a tree, bird in a tree Who taught you to sing so well? Do you know that I am listening? Brother bird, can you even tell? And though your love might be far away Even another town You sing your song all through the day In case she comes around
[Verse 5] Bird in a tree, bird in a tree Oh, the sun is getting wide Soon the night will come And the morning won’t be for a while So fare thee well, dear friend of mine What a pleasure, I must say We both should prob’ly get some sleep Tomorrow’s another day
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