I don’t want to belabour the point that Spring’s arrival is more eagerly anticipated than any other season’s, yet it’s not only a fact, but a particularly poignant one in 2017 when its is taking so long to extract Winter’s talons from the back of the land….

So I thought I should share this poem I started writing many years ago and have updated many times as my insights have evolved. I think it’s especially relevant now:

Spring Birds

what first excites
about the return of Spring
is the birds....

as southern Sun duels 
tired North Wind
for Soil's allegiance
we search,
each day, 
heavenward
hopefully
impatiently...



more suddenly than bursting buds,
new green,
or arctic blooms,
our winged friends reappear
almost as if
they’d never left...




First, the geese
in majestic undulating wedges
pointing the way —
their unmelodic greetings still
music to
starved ears...

then one
.....by one
......and more
..........and more
...........they find us —


mergansers and mallards darting
in and out of marshes and shores
squabbling for space.

Click images below to enlarge….

House Finch, Belmont.

Crested Song Sparrow of Belmont photographed on April 1….

sparrows and finches trilling in hedges,
....bluebirds riding fence rails,
.......robins and flickers pulling treasure from lawns,
blackbirds, red-flashed and furious, grating like rusting barbed wire stretching on fences crossed,
..........staking their claims and pleading for mates,
.................killdeers kri-kri-ing in charade,
..........and, here and there,
.......juncoes investigating everything.


they jog our memory —
are these the fledglings
last seen camoufrocked
in battle fatigues?

bright plumage now
restored by tropic sunshine
costumed to suit the operettas
rehearsed for eternity
now broadcast on sunbeams
to our winter-weary souls....