It’s bitter cold today. The fields and woods are frozen hard, the sky broods over the farm like an inverted bowl. Winter has come to stay. As I went out to feed my birds this morning, I thought of the days just past, the hard, cold world that revealed itself in a single, violent act. How do we go on? The snow birds in their black cowls settle on the ground near me like monks gathering for morning prayer. A cardinal flies to the top of the persimmon tree, a drop of blood against the snow. The wind whips around the corner of the house blowing my seed bag across the yard. Suddenly a longing for spring engulfs me like a flash flood. I squeeze my eyes tight. Let me see a single snowdrop pushing through the hard ground. Let me touch just one swelling bud in the alder thicket. Let me smell damp earth—A fool’s hope. I know that. No sun will shine today. Tonight and tomorow night will fall starless and cold. Soft twilights lie far off, locked away in growing icicles that festoon the bluffs above Big Valley.
The feeders filled, I head back to the house for the warmth and light that awaits me. As I round the corner of the yard, I hear a call far in the distance. As the sound grows, a flock of Canada geese materialize out of the winter ethers. Overhead now, their voices grow to a wild harmony. They circle the pond searching for open water, but finding none speed north disappearing as quickly as they had come. I strain my ears until their ancient voices die away, replaced by the steady hammering of a chickadee opening his seed on the deck railing.
Like the geese and the winter birds I am here today, and the world is wonderful and terrible. The geese must carry on in their search for water, the birds in their search for food, and I in my serach for answers. We are all born, and we all die, but as the naturalist, Diane Ackerman said, “What a savage and beautiful country lies in between.”
Reflection: “Wild Geese” a poem by Mary Oliver:
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese,
harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
Julie Atkinson
Steve
Holly Atkinson
