cardinals coming and going—flying through the slats on the little side porch, eating at the feeder, drinking in the fountain
a single peony shimmering in the morning sun
cups of orange spice tea on cool nights
family gatherings with pineapple popsicles
glasses of deep red wine into the night
cool linen sheets for afternoon naps
the stillness of a perched crow—
perhaps it contemplates a distant destination,
the whisper of flapping wings,
the camaraderie of a journey at dawn across January skies,
or the solitary moment on the margin between flight and rest
A feather’s not a bird
The rain is not the sea
A stone is not a mountain
But a river runs through me
Lyrics from the song, A Feather’s Not a Bird by Rosanne Cash, 2014
early, in the blue morning,
with a dusting of wet snow
and bitter wind,
the crows make their way from their roost—
their cacophony of sound traveling on the falling,
thick flakes, from a height that renders them small black specks that i struggled to see, beyond the iciness that clung to my lashes
An exquisite cup, less than two inches across, of felted plant, fern or dandelion-seed down, covered so perfectly with moss and lichens and fastened with spider webs as to appear a mere protuberance on the limb, and lined with a layer of the finest down.
from Birds of America, 1936 – Garden City Publishing Company, Inc.
Our separate lives coincided, and all my self-absorbed anxiety vanished in that one fugitive moment, when a bird in the sky on its way somewhere else sent a glance across the divide and stitched me back into a world where both of us have equal billing.
from Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald, 2020
fuzzy bees and spikey petals
blue feathers on the forest floor
yawns and naps and cold, sweet tea
seashells in a garden
right now: is it that everything matters, or is it that nothing matters?
in the blue light of dawn, the snow fell silently on branches,
the crows called to one another
and to me–
after watching them from the window with warm coffee in my hands and hopefulness in my heart,
the pup and i joined their play, like restless children after a long sickness, the cold and the drifting snow saturating us with reckless abandon
fly away my friend
spanishwoods 