hope sings

Friday, February 10th: I woke up to the sound of birdsong. Not the disruptive caw of an ever-present crow. Not the solitary sound of the single dove I heard a week ago. But many mourning doves, cooing and calling and answering as I emerged from sleep--a sound so unexpected it was more nearly a recollection, from some past summer day, of birdsong in the morning, than the real thing. Funny how I forget these things in the silence of winter mornings--birdsong, rainstorm, leaf flutter. And how they take me by surprise again, filling me with gratefullness and relief. "Ah, once again," I say to myself. And as a running private joke, "Nearly survived another one." And then driving down the road a day later, as if to confirm that it was not an overactive imagination or merely the suggestion of a hopeful heart, I have this evidence: a flock of black swallows, circling and gathering on a small plot of grass between two gray streets and a gray building and a gray sky. A hillside of purple crocus. Three robins on a birdfeeder. Green tongues of daylily, jumping the gun.

Today is stunningly sunny and bright. There is a warm look about it, but a bitter, biting wind on the other side of the glass. I am inconsistantly dressed in thin pants, sunglasses, and a down coat. The wind slaps me in the face as I make fast strides across campus, nearly skipping every few feet to speed myself up and out of the cutting cold. But I have the sound of birdsong. I have a flock of swallows, a new crop of seed catalogs, and a few green shoots. I still have firewood against the cold outside, and these things against the seizing up of the soul.