The Gift of Wings

Lori McCray
Aug 25, 2017 · 2 min read

I can forgive the world, but I cannot forgive myself. Last night at dusk, a hummingbird descended upon the Bee Balm ~ his wings so loud he startled me, and I screamed. I had my camera. This was the shot I tried for all last summer, and I frightened him away. Of course I am obsessed now, watching to see if he’s come back but I don’t see him, and I can’t let it go.

Yesterday a bird flew fast and low across Route 20 and intersected with my car. “Maybe I didn’t kill her,” I thought, and turned around to check. It was a robin. Big and beautiful and dead. I turned her over with a stick to make sure she wasn’t breathing. And then I stood there a long time, on the side of the busy road, as the cars whizzed by, looking into her open eye.

I picked her up. Tenderly, as if I’d known her, I carried her to the woods and wept ~ my tears a blanket on her gorgeous breast. On the way home, while I was sobbing in the car (driving slower now. Perhaps she saved me), the Robin said, “Why do you cry, when I have given you my wings?”

LBM 7/18/07

Scotty took this, when he was 7. One of my very favorite pics. The little Robin fledgling was abandoned by her mother. She didn’t survive, but she left well loved.

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Photographer, Poet, Musician, Mother, Mystic, Gardener, friend of wild creatures, swan whisperer. Find me on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wingthing/

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