Sometimes, in the life of a bird
A call pulls at her wings
And she goes.
When the long song of summer
yields to an emptying autumn,
and then to bare-limbed winter,
she climbs the wind and leaves.
We may try to drag her back,
standing alone in the snow
and shouting at the heavens.
But there is no answer of feathers.
We cannot compel her.
She is away in her own time;
A winter’s time.
And in those months,
Candle-dark and hollow,
We miss her music and her color
like a lost piece of the soul.
Our time draws out beyond all seeming,
Each day a week, each week a year.
The winter a twelve-year season.
We cannot command the spring
any more than we can
recall the bird.
These are forces beyond us,
gone outside our ken and
moved by their own reasons.
But they do move, in time.
One day we wake to find
the ice giving way to water.
The southwind breaths of new life,
and we search the sky with our hearts
until we find her,
a summer song in her train,
her long migration done.
Sometimes, in the life of a bird
A call pulls at her wings
And she goes.
But always, in the course of years
the world changes, and the new season
brings her back to us once more.
And we rejoice.
