This Moment

Hello Friends,

   After writing on Blogger since 2007,  I began posting to Substack some months ago, while still posting here. But this will be my last post on this blog, as I have been paying a monthly fee to the company that sends out the emails each time a new post appears and there is no need for that on Substack.  This blog as it is as of this post will remain for a while but all the posts I have ever made are also on my Substack, as well.

  If you still like what you read here, I hope you will join my Earthy Blessings posts at that Substack address.  https://annbodling.substack.com  There is no cost to subscribe. 

Thank you for reading all these years.

   Gratefully,
        Ann

 

Today it is too easy
to take the cardinals’
February chorus
for granted
when
only a few days
ago I stopped
in wonder
at their
first notes

My mind rushes
ahead
looks forward
to the first
phoebe’s song
when
all along
the cardinals bid me
“Stay with us
stay here
stay now.”

                            Image from the late Bob Moul's Pbase gallery

Of Skunk Cabbages and Cardinals (or Hope in the Bleak Late Winter)

They have emerged, unlikely
harbingers of spring's coming
glory, their
inobtrusive mottled
heads rising through the
frozen muck melted by the
heat of their own bodies.
In the days ahead,
at just the right moment,
their humanly unappreciated scent
will draw first-of-the-year
flies and beetles
to feast on their, as-yet-undeveloped,
pollen.

He sings this morning, an exuberant  
rhythmic, clear whistle  
not heard since last spring, 
when he was courting.
February is too early for courting
and yet, in the now,
as the sun rises higher and
the daylight lengthens,
he tunes his voice and
his hopes towards
what is to
come. 

As do I.

Mary's Lark

This morning I bore witness to the waking of the day and to the participation of its heralds. I took my place on the porch at 5:30 am, just as the first cardinal began to sing, a half hour before dawn. A few minutes later a second one echoed each call and then, from further away, a third tuned up and the duet became a trio...like an avian version of the Wailin' Jennys' song, "One Voice." In time, a fourth and a fifth joined the ensemble and by 5:50, it sounded as if every cardinal in the world had awakened and joined the chorus.

At 5:52 a few Carolina chickadee and white-throated sparrow voices emerged amid the cardinal's raucous seranade and by 6:00, as the woodland and garden turned from grey to  green, the cardinals' song began to fade. Perhaps grudgingly giving up on further sleep, titmice and Carolina wrens accompanied the chickadees and white-throats, their collective melody punctuated now and then by Canada geese and barred owls' exclamations. The spring morning was in full swing!

Now it is evening and the order reverses and at some point, right around dusk, all the voices will fall silent for a few minutes, and then the cardinals' evening vespers will commence...not the exuberant exaltations of a new day, but the soft chipping of a lullaby, as though intent on lulling themselves to sleep.

Whenever I hear bird song, I think of this passage that was recorded by Alexander Carmichael, as he wandered through Scotland in the 1800's, attempting to set down the almost-lost Celtic prayers and blessings of centuries past.

"My mother would be asking us to sing our morning song to God down in the back-house, as Mary's lark was singing it up in the clouds, and as Christ's maven (song-thrush) was singing it yonder in the tree giving glory to God of the creatures for the repose of the night, for the light of the day, and for the joy of life. She would tell us that every creature on the earth here below and in the ocean beneath and in the air above was giving glory to the great God of the creatures and the worlds, of the virtues and the blessings, and would we be dumb."

God of the Creatures, thank you.