Daffodil
Dawn Chorus
I was surprised to hear them: birds.
It was February still. Late February. But in the darkness before sunrise, birds sang me awake. How could I have forgotten about morning birds?
After a long winter with maybe a dozen smallish winter storms, and months of overcast gloom, the return of singing birds gave me a lift before I put my feet on the floor.
A few days later, on March 1, the tiny patch of daffodils on the south side of the house launched into yellow song as well. It is spring.
I’ve long waited for a break from the gray skies that owned the sky this winter. February moved by more quickly than I expected this year and suddenly, it seems, the sunrises not quite so cold, my jackets lighter.
And then one morning, the birds sang.
Life is the art of tiny pieces.
Tiny pieces are a portal to joy.
There is a reward that comes from waiting.
Winter is a long sea we cross. We bounce on this sea for months, gray water chopping beneath the boat’s hull, and we know that, unless we’re sailing in a circle, we’ll hit land eventually. So we’re cruising under starless and sunless skies and we look off in the distance and see nothing but water. And then one day, we still don’t see land on the horizon, but we catch a bird in the sky.
Birds equal land. And spring.
The songbirds are singing us awake again.
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