Listen.
Quiet like Sunday on the first of Spring. No traffic, no voices, no airplanes. Only birdsong or a dog barking.
Listen.
Humanity withdraws and the world settles into silence. People in houses gaze through closed windows. They can hear sunlight drip off buildings and roar down empty streets.
Listen.
Robin writes in the odd corners of the day and night and often about birds. See more at thenightmail.com.
“Pa! They’re here.”
“Who?”
“The crows.”
“Jeez, Ma, give it a rest.”
“They’re watching.”
“What?”
“The garden, just waiting for the plants to grow, ripen.”
“Ma!”
“Then they’ll do their dirty work.”
“Yer crazy, cut it out!”
“Pa! One landed!”
“Wait, Ma, no! Come back. Heck! Crow for dinner again.”
Robin writes in the odd corners of the day and night and often about birds. See more at thenightmail.com.
Whenever two hummingbirds strive for dominance at a feeder, whenever they fight over a patch of blossoms, whenever one strafes my head because I’m too close to its food source, I am reminded that hummingbirds, like all birds, are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs.
A hummingbird has a T-Rex heart.
Robin writes in the odd corners of the day and night and often about birds. See more at thenightmail.com.
Tonight I write by candlelight. A scheduled outage, they said. No light, no heat, no electronic hum, but in the shadows story pours from my pen. Stream of consciousness, words flow like water or wine or my own blood.
Now I know I should have contrived a blackout long ago.
Robin writes in the odd corners of the day and night and often about birds. See more at thenightmail.com.