Challenge: Include a bird. Be sure to identify the bird by species.
Two Robins
When I came out of the meeting, late afternoon, Friday, the sun had decided to warm up the parking lot, as if to underline “the weekend!” and increase the rise of freedom's light making my skin thin and loose. Still, I couldn’t get into my car and go, not when two robins twittered in the budding tree just yards away, bobbing back and forth on bare branches, flashing me their bulging red bellies, fluttering and fidgeting like tiny soul containers overfilled, harbingers, signals of something mighty coming. I tried to sneak up on them, tried to hold my phone just so, to frame them in a photo, to capture their promise in my machine. But of course they flew, voices trailing back on the warming air, scolding, celebrating, saying fool fool looktoyourself and gogogo pursueyourown release ---
You have come to me as a hummingbird
three times now.
Once for joy, once for strength, once
for hope.
Each time I have felt your loved and it overwhelmed
me, knocking air
out of my lungs and I have gasped
each time I realized that it was you – I felt
unworthy.
But you have loved all your grandchildren, held
them all even when we were
scattered far from your arms. You came
because I needed you,
needed your joy, your strength,
your hope.
But you also came to remind me
that I am worthy
of those gifts.
Wonderful! I can feel the joy, strength and hope in that tiny, busy body.