It has happened every morning for perhaps the last two weeks. At around 6:20 a.m. as I drink my morning coffee and write a few thoughts that have come to me in the middle of some form of sleep, I hear it. The song of a cardinal someplace nearby. Singing. Giving voice to one of the few bird songs I can identify. The first morning it happened I was jolted out of the early morning fog that is winter by its pure sound. When it began to happen every morning and at the same time I was filled with wonder. What is happening for this scarlet beauty at just this particular time of every morning? Do birds have some internal alarm that says the day is new and on its way? Now I wait for it and would be not a little distraught if I didn’t hear it.

The other thought that came to mind was whether or not the cardinal has any sense at all as to the hope its song sings into the world for this particular human. Tired of snow. Depressed by gray. Weary of having so many layers of clothing to carry around on my bones. Did this small act of Creation have any idea the joy its melodious voice brings to the world? My sense it is simply doing what it does and there is a reason unknown to me for the time, the tune. I pray there is some joy in its body as it sings out in the still frigid hours of the morning.

I was reminded of the poem by one who seems to be able to know the birds in ways I cannot. Mary Oliver in her poem Red Bird writes:

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows, 
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens –
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

It is true we do see the cardinal all winter in these places I call home. But the song is not always present. Perhaps this winged one is also sensing spring and is urging its arrival with the beauty of its music. I am full of hope for that as well.

These days find some of my closest friends and I holding a sacred space for one of our dear ones whose life was driven by the love of those who could take wing. He is walking his last days on land and is slowly inching toward taking wing. He has lived a life ‘bold in spirit’ and has taught so many of us a love for those whose flight is beautiful and seemingly impossible to the gravity held ones. As we walk this path with him, we are trying with all our might to cause our too often narrow hearts to open with gratitude. For him. For the birds he loves.For this life we all are privileged to live.

Over the next mornings I will listen for the cardinal’s song and I will allow my heart to open and be filled. With grace. With gratitude. With love. With hope. Knowing that the red bird is ‘firing up the landscape as nothing else could.’ It is as it has always been and will be.