Late Autumn Robin; or, Grounded with Hope in my Eyes

*taps my non-touch screen* Hello? Is this thing on? Yes? Good.

I was beginning to grow worried that a lack of words would cause my blog to short circuit and die a slow, technologically webby type death. I feel like I should cuddle my blog and coo regrets for having neglected it for so long.

I feel like it may be like the scared little robin with an injured wing that I saw hopping around my front yard a few days back. Eyes-wide with the wonder of a grounded life, the longing for wind beneath its wings tearing a black hole into the fabric of its avian soul. I wanted to hold it close to my heart that day and let it know that us grounded souls still beat along to the rhythm of the coming and going of the days. The ticking percussion of the hours as they seep through the space and time colliding and expanding around us with every movement, every decision, every gentle push that Nature presses upon our backs during moments of indecision. I wanted to give it love that the world would probably soon retract, because we all know that a soul meant for the skies will never stay grounded for long, for good or ill.

It reminded me of the baby robin that I took care of for a day before it died peacefully in the crystalline hue of a full moon night in late spring. Its cries tender and melodic even against the coming stillness of death. I knew then that there is nothing more unfair in life than a bird that never has the chance to fly.

I looked at the grown robin hopping along the ground a few days ago and hoped that it would learn to fly again. I hoped that the wind would mend the slowly growing tear in its fragile cobalt soul. I hoped for a cloudless day to send it upward over the mountains rolling gently like craggy waves along the western horizon. I hoped then and today I still do.

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I Cradled a Baby Robin on Its Dying Day

By: Jonathan Garren (aka: Mr. Wind-Up Bird)

I cradled a baby robin on its dying day,

A fallen autumn leaf in the bud of spring.

Fledgling cries wane to mewing pleas

For a mother’s warmth, a mother’s strength -

Nestled bowls of pine straw and twine,

Blooming plumage to rise and fall ‘neath

The distant love of unknown brothers.

Why should the tender soul of spring

Blow transient upon the warming winds

Like the listless detritus of winter?

If I could only ply a fraction of my life

And gift it to this simple soul, I would

Live a lesser life for such innocence deprived

To blossom unfettered by the snare of an early death.

I cradled a baby robin on its dying day

And watched its life fly upward over the mountain.

I curse these hands of Adam, these loins of God,

Creators and destroyers both of simple fragility.

Lamenting lives left to fate, lives to be buried

Beneath the reigns of cruel men,

To live within the scripture of ill-tempered

Democratic morality, the majority

A justice of pitched scales and averted eyes.

I cradled the baby robin on its dying day,

The veil of my soul wrapped fallow among feathers unemployed.