sing to your mother, little bird

The birds have returned and this makes us very glad. Megan in particular scowls at the geese, They just poop all over and are annoying, she says, and I agree with her that they poop all over. But I remember that they are beautiful creatures with beautiful songs and not at all worthy of having their heads cut off and microwaved like some kids in the local dorm. I heard someone say they were a Natural Heritage once, but I'm not sure what it means to be a Heritage.

Today I stopped at the window and looked at Spring. I heard Spring in the tree outside the neighbor's house. The neighbor who would always ask me for cigarettes and then say Danke schön when I gave her one. She had cuts on her wrists and I wondered if she ever tried reading Tolstoy or Dickens, but I didn't ask her. The tree outside her house sings of Spring. At least thirty birds climb into that tree and sing their hearts out, and I wonder if anyone can doubt that Spring has finally come, but Effie still mumbles about the weather, Oh it's a cold one today, Oh, she says with a shake of her head. I want to tell her that the birds outside my crack-taking neighbor's house know that it's spring and that the geese who poop on the sidewalk know it's spring, but instead I agree, Oh yeah it's crazy cold out there.

I think that the earth can hear the little birds and the pooping birds and is starting to wake up. I can smell the earth on warm days and I know that she is turning over in her sleep, ready to rise from the dead for another season. And so I sing as well, strumming Such Great Heights or Falling Slowly, which are both love songs but are sad and about losing something, on my guitar.

Maybe spring will come soon, and we will all gather at last to drink His wine, knowing that life has again come to this sad little, dead little planet of earth.