The other night I awoke in the early am to the call of the Saw-whet Owl in our back woods.
Unmistakably digital in sound, I wondered what alarm was sounding off in the pre-dawn darkness. Or should I say digital alarms are unmistakably Saw-whet in sound given Saw-whets predate digital alarms by eons.
As I awoke more into a fuller awareness I heard a second Saw-whet calling in response to the first and can I tell you, it did something to me. Two lovers calling out to one another across the darkness.
In spite of us humans, life goes on where it can, how it can.
Shortly thereafter another song called out--that of the Mourning Dove greeting dawn and sounding so forlorn I wondered how I might get up and face the day--was that me crying out in my sleep again from yet another nightmare or the dove?--I could feel the call in my chest--aching but strangely life affirming too. So wonderfully life affirming. And so sad.
While gathering apple sticks for our bunnies in the nearby apple grove with Maria and Clara three eve's ago, eight majestic Great -blue Herons passed northwesterly overhead from the nearby south shore waters, their underbellies aglow with the late day sun and I felt so alive, as though the sunshine on their bellies was there for me too. For joy. For peacefulness. For constancy.
I paused there in those moments and spread my heart's wings open to the herons, like the moment was intended for me and me alone. I let their flight flow through me, slow and steady wing beats, my face upturned and staring, smiling like a fool. The girls shared my impulse to stand in awe, intuitively understanding my need in that moment was great as I stood there so unabashedly, head tossed back, in love. They know that herons do that to me and I know I need not apologize.
Then yesterday afternoon when walking back to our yard from a short walk Maria and I saw four crows in our front garden working furiously to strip the cedar logs lining the walkway for nesting materials.We stood and watched them working like a little crow team. Working so knowingly it was beautiful.
And one crow in the morning time was digging at the sandstone edging the garden until it lifted several large clumps of gorgeous green moss off the rocks for its nest. All Maria could think of was little crow baby bottoms sitting cozily on that moss waiting to be fed in the not too distant future.
But I don't want to think about the future, now. So I am sitting in presence, when I can and how. And nature observation, as always, is a balm for my world weary heart.
The Black-capped chickadees have also returned to our nesting box and are setting up housekeeping there, chirping their alarm call when the nearby chipmunks come to fill their cheeks with seed to haul back to the woods to store up, in case. Like me and my pantry full of dried lentils, chickpeas, pinto beans, oats...Storing up, in case.
It must have been around 2am last night when Maria and I were awake (a second night) with a dear sick pet rabbit and she spotted a flying squirrel feeding on black oil sunflower seeds at our stump leading us to wonder is it nesting nearby as well?
Imagine baby flying squirrels she implored Lucas this morning, who willingly obliged. Besides we might as well imagine wonderful things as awful.
How welcome all these signs of life emerging are while the human world is hauntingly, awfully and somehow, paradoxically, wonderfully silent.
Speaking of haunting and lovely both, a friend shared the link to Andrea Bocelli's Easter Sunday concert of hope held in Duomo Cathedral in Italy yesterday aft.
Bocelli's music captured me twenty years ago when Maria was a baby and we would dance around our apartment in the afternoon listening to his swelling vocals moving like a murmuration of starlings; rising, crescendo, falling.
Yesterday all I could do while listening was sit and cry. For what I am not sure. Likely for this whole, damned, beautiful world.
Seeing images of some of the world's major city streets utterly devoid of any human presence and knowing the fear and sadness which is almost globally palpable while listening to him sing songs of hope and joy was almost more than I could bear. My feelings for the loveliness of his voice ringing out across the cathedral and streets of Milan were notwithstanding any discussion of the Vatican.
Skyping with both mine and my husband's siblings, nieces and nephews and parents to connect on Easter was poignant and eerie too. The looks on each set of our parent's faces as they looked at all of us, their progeny, physical distancing on screens instead of sitting around the table together was also almost too much to bear. And seeing them, so lovely.
But bear and bear witness we must.
Here are today's poems--the first, called He Reproves the Curlew, was written by Yeats and seems to speak to our longing for human touch and our pervasive sense of loss in these desperate times. The second one was written by children's author Edith Nesbit, author of The Railway Children which we enjoyed as a read aloud a number of years back. Her poem entitled Hope is a call for the return of springtime's beauty and makes me think of the stunning photos my west coast sister Janice keeps sending me of early spring flowers.
Hope you enjoy them.
Be well,
Jill
He Reproves the Curlew
O CURLEW, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the water in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
passion-dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind.
by William Butler Yeats
Hope
O thrush, is it true?
Your song tells
Of a world born anew,
Of fields gold with buttercups, woodlands all blue
With hyacinth bells;
Of primroses deep
In the moss of the lane,
Of a Princess asleep
And dear magic to do.
Will the sun wake the princess? O thrush, is it true?
Will Spring come again?
Will Spring come again?
Now at last
With soft shine and rain
Will the violet be sweet where the dead leaves have lain?
Will Winter be past?
In the brown of the copse
Will white wind-flowers star through
Where the last oak-leaf drops?
Will the daisies come too,
And the may and the lilac? Will Spring come again?
O thrush, is it true?
Edith Nesbit