The robins are back, which in more ways than one afford something of a harbinger of spring. They come at a time when winter has stretched our last nerve and, like a guitar string, is plucking out a monotonous and abrasive tune.
The chill and snowflakes that felt quaint and appropriate and even invigorating in the run up to Christmas by now are feeling interminable and grating and demoralizing. We are, as March blusters along, literally aching for spring.
The robins always surprise me when they appear every year about this time, because any mid-western fool knows that the occasional milder days appearing randomly through the week will very likely be slapped down by yet another bitter turn. This for at least another month. Indeed, last Friday saw mercury in the 50's, while Sunday brought new snow, and Tuesday the low was again near 0. Robins are either incredibly intrepid or dangerously naive to show up this early.
But what I love the most about their appearing -- and what makes their arrival as much of a metaphor as a fact -- is their girth. Everyone of them seems to be carrying a dozen or more eggs. They are huge -- bellies swollen almost into caricatures. After somehow managing to get airborne, they clunk back down gracelessly to the earth to hunt for food or, more likely, simply to rest. And there they move lunkishly across the lawn as feathery promises -- pregnant with both the assurance and the foretaste of the spring that is -- one of these days -- to come.
Welcome back, you comical, beautiful, very pregnant avian heralds. We have been waiting.
1 comment:
When you live in a place like Iowa in which winter physcially reminds you of death then spring means something different... Something deeper... I too am excited for spring
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