Redwing

Whilst I have a vast appreciation for the regular daily wild visitors to my garden, there is nothing like the illicit (by lockdown standards) thrill of an unexpected guest!

We can have no visitors,

Isolation is our medicine

And friends must keep distance

Behind the blue flicker of a screen 

Or the jitter of a beam returning from orbit

The distance unpalatable

When you think of it.

 

And yet today I have rejoiced in long lost friends

Who last passed through in the brittle chill of an erstwhile winter

Briefly changing our hedge from berried to a bluster of wing

Brown and red and speckled

And busy with industrious company.

 

A flock, twenty strong, of redwings,

Feast on our berries and rest, bending the branches of the apple tree.

I look up the collective noun:

A Promise of Redwing is suggested, or a Consolation.

 

I nod to the promise of the shifting of seasons

The promise that nature settles nobly into the present 

And feasts on what it finds there.

I breathe in the consolation of ruby flashes in the brown 

And novel visitors to my urban threshold

And the joy that only unexpected company can bring.