Common Birds 66 - Black Capped Chickadee

Monday, March 4

The work I normally can wade through rose like floodwaters last week. But proposal seasons come, and proposal seasons go. As the business recedes, and my feet are once more on the damp earth, I see that Spring has come.

The cry of a red-winged blackbird rings over the cattails. I’ve been waiting to hear it, the herald of the changing times. The coolness in the air is a lingering memory, made fond by fading. Buds consider greening. No one is on the river. Goldeneyes, buffleheads, and mergansers are working their way north. Chickadees, those tiny constants, sing just as they did in winter and just as they will in the summer, as steadfast as the trees where they alight. All is well, all is right.

I feel a great poetic urge. An urge to assert that Spring did not begin when the red-winged blackbirds returned, that it did not return when the frozen pond became a pond, that it did not come with the lengthening days, but that Spring arrived at the moment I noticed it. By giving my attention, the transformation was made complete. 

But I love that this isn’t true. Spring came while I was inside working. Spring came without me noticing, and will continue to come on the petals of trees and the wings of wood ducks and warblers. My attention is not its crowning moment. The seasons do not wait for me. 

Yet all the same, I like to give Spring my attention, and Spring likes to be gracious, too. The buds will come, the soggy soil will come, the melted ice and the chickadees will come. Spring loves to draw out the giving of these gifts, and I get to receive them.