Waiting on His Song in My Woods
It’s not spring until he comes home
“A birdsong can even, for a moment, make the whole world into a sky within us, because we feel that the bird does not distinguish between its heart and the world’s.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
The Wood Thrush arrived in my woods today. His lilting, flute-like song is the official music of May. An unassuming bird of brown back and white breast splattered with the same brown, he needn’t look glamorous. He is the opera star of the woods- the phantom I most likely will never see while he lives here, for he is elusive and shy. But I don’t need to see him. His song is enough.
I remember the first time I heard the Wood Thrush sing. I was standing near the chicken coop in the woods on a friend’s property. Suddenly, I heard a haunting song: “Ee-oh-lay.” I stood very still as if moving would break the spell. My eyes were wide and brimming with tears. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. My friend had never even paid attention to him and he lived right there in her woods. I was astounded.
In the many years since, I have listened intently every spring for his song. Some years I have been lucky enough to have one nearby, but often, the spring passed into summer, and then fall, and I never once heard the haunting, ethereal music of the Wood Thrush.
