March 11 - March 15 Red Winged Blackbirds Sing

2010-Out by the fire, a red-winged black bird perched there calling and one I couldn’t see called in reply. Their call reminds me of waterfalls- a kind of musical gargling.The finches are coloring up-perhaps the very same dull greenish yellow of the uguiso, or Japanese nightingale mentioned by Liza Dalby. Hard rain for three days on and off.

From here, March puddles
Reflecting the cold white sky
Might as well be ice.

I hear a crash near the bird feeder and then see something swoop away towards the maple in front of the house.  It’s a small hawk that apparently dived at a bird at the feeder-unsuccessfully. That never happened before.
2011-Wild Geese Fly North.  Raw cold and grey, day after day. A little spot of sun just enough to make you feel what you are missing. The reservoir was still frozen solid- ok, a few rotten green patches and some open water at the edge near the eagle nest.  That was a few days ago; I haven’t felt like walking in this cold and wind. After the feeling of a breakthrough in meditation, a kind of relapse; suffocation, twitching eyes, coma-like fogginess.  Nothing to do but accept it, and anxiety about contacting agents for the book--it makes me sick to my stomach.  My yearly tarot reading pointed to finding community and the monastery came to mind.  I feel almost ready to attend a Sunday meditation and dharma talk-but not yet.  My doing nothing joyfully has soured.
2012- The eagles are still rebuilding the nest. Poindexter, one of the eagle photographers haunting the reservoir daily, tells me that there were two eggs last year that never hatched. Also a new female this year. Days of hot dry weather that, however pleasant, seem just wrong at this stage of spring. I’m reminded again that there is no such thing as ‘spring’; its just a loose collection of generalities around an idea or concept. Hot, cold, dry, wet, windy, still; it’s all really spring-each one a unique collection of those attributes. I see how the ideal can keep one from seeing the real-if it doesn’t ‘fit’ one ignores or rejects it.
The crocuses are looking kind of beat by the warmth but the daffodils are blooming and the forsythia are just beginning to swell out.
2013-I need to see a robin. They're so late this year.

Yellow petals dropped;
Forced forsythia branches
Stand in sour water.