Is this how the songbird feels, when bright spring sets aglow the leaves in golden sun?
Does she see the world again after months of clouds and chaos and is she relieved by the first sign of light?
Is her frigid vigil cut short by the renaissance that resonates from the sky into the soil and up into her soul through the roots of her home?
Can she understand the cycle? Or does she think her first flight in the new spring is a betrayal of the life that came before?
What if she wishes for darkness and dread, for her world to be dead so that her silence has an excuse to exist?
And on that first warm day when the sun coaxes the cold to go away, does she pray for it to stay?
Is she able to imagine that any season could be as bright or dear as the year before and though her mind tells her to keep the solid silence, to respect the passèd life, does her voice disobey?
Is there some inner instinct that forces her to sing when the spring rises up from the frozen Earth?
When a force for joy as irresistible as a lonesome flower, refusing to be held down by cold, breaks through to her sight, how can she refuse to rejoice?
At the sight of a million shades of every colour, of a land birthed out of hell by hope, how could misery cope and keep a hold on that old bird, when her rebellious soul revolts and refuses to respect an agony so thick it licks at her like fire at a log?
But she will not burn.
She will throw her feathers wide and fly and her note will rend apart the ice inside her heart so that her mourning will end and her bright new day begin.
Is this how the songbird feels when her widow’s winter draws its final frozen breath and sets her free?
//Julian Legere, writer
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