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the cherry blossom

has arrived

as if that is what

we were really waiting for.

from the poem “Cranes lean in” by Imtia Dharker

I’ve always liked to observe the world around me, but since I slowed down more because of a pandemic, I start to see my local piece more clearly. Every morning when I go out to do exercises by the river, I meet up over a dozen species of birds in twenty minutes. Before I usually heard the loudly screaming gulls like in a tube.

I have a lot of bird neighbors

So, on the Distillery Road, a blackbird sits on the burgundy gate and eat his breakfast, yes, there is a worm in his orange beak. On the same street, two robins fly straight under my feet, raise their heads up and tweet to me: Hello, if I understand bird’s language.

Almost every day at eight, goldfinch cut across the meadow close to the river. He wears a red fluffy balaclava and is vividly waving yellow-black wings, on which a nature painted white dots. I met a goldfinch face to face for the first time in my life. When I sit down under my willow, there are on the branches two great tits sing the song. I also meet a trush, although at first time I was convinced that this is a big sparrow. A magpie often jumps in the grass, and a wagtail flies on an empty street instead of cars. When pass the canal I see  three pigeons have been sitting since early morning, and literally in front of them, hundred meters away, three ducks look at the same channel. In the thickets on the river, swans take the morning toilet, and the grey heron peers from the high red buoy.

In so long isolation, sometimes I am lack of energy and I lose my sense, then I think about bird neighbours. Into this external and internal space in myself seems to fit Agnieszka Osiecka’s poem:

A bird flew over my head by a whisper

Today a bird nested

in my hair,

says so:

Wait.

A little bit more…

Everything will come back.

The books,

boys,

animals,

even  small blue pencil.

One more moment!