I Heard The Red-Wing Blackbird

Saturday of the Third Week of Lent


Lord, send out your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth.  
                                                                       Psalm 14:4

I heard the red-wing blackbird shatter the globe of air as I opened the door this morning.  He is back.  What a rich, black and blue aura landing in the yard and on the feeder, folding the dark realm of night beneath his wings.  His glossy song and strip of scarlet opening the pale lids of winter; the bins of dust in my heart.  What cleric estate he holds from his perch. The rambling murmur of green pulsing from a place of sleep stretched out and deep within all that will awake, are awakening.  He reappears out of the tangles of frosty blackberry and multi-flora rose briers; a dark, lilting coming of spring across the waves of light like the voice of God through all the dead wood and leaves of self; the time of returning to the earth, of a gray sleep and a forgetting.