To The Spring Birds Chirping Loudly at 4:30 AM

By David Mitchell (_MG_8891-80.jpg)
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],

I don’t disagree with you. Winter this year was brutal and forced us all into smaller and smaller spaces, not just in our homes, but in our minds. Several days in a row the sun was just a suggestion of light in the day, and we checked our weather apps constantly to see if it would get above 9 degrees. No luck. Our mantra was, “It doesn’t last.”

Now, in April, you have either returned from your winter stay in the south or you have freed yourself from the icy chains, and you are busy every morning screaming about it. You flit around so furiously in the arbor vitae that it appears to be shaking, though there is no wind. You face east and chirp chirp chirp as the sun rises cold through the trees.

Call it a prayer. Call it a song. Call it an instinct, an impulse. Call it a need. Call it a responsibility. Call it a chorus, one voice out of many. Call it an architecture of sound in which we break open the morning. Call it now. Call it here. Call it romantic. Call it crazy.

I fear you are going to hurt yourselves, the way you crackle and squawk. I fear you will exhaust yourselves while the ground is still winter-solid and the worms are deep in the earth.

Let’s not pray this hard. Let’s not sing this loudly. Let’s not shake the trees by its smallest branches in celebration just yet. Let’s allow the morning light to melt onto us. Let’s sleep the sleep of the warm and comforted.

I say this every year. You never hear me.