Dark, negative and unsettling circumstances beyond control have taken precedence over my family’s life for the past few weeks and I have been so very hungry for a glimmer of hope. I found it today in my routine walk-sometimes I call these daily excursions my ‘salvation hikes’-such was today.

Hence the absolute power of nature-my birds were back! I have been looking –actually listening-for them lately, wondering if they, too, would arrive early for spring. And they had! The unmistakable " bubbling delirium of ecstatic music that flows from the gifted throat like sparkling champagne," "a mad, reckless song-fantasia, an outbreak of pent-up, irrepressible glee," and "a tinkle of fairy music, like the strains of an old Greek harp." 

My Bobolinks! Bold as brass, these yellow headed, black and white birds scolded my dogs for coming too close as they perched low in the grasses. They’ve earned this sense of entitlement I suppose, having made one of the longest migrations in the Western Hemisphere—a round trip of approximately 20,000-km  from Brazil, Paraguay, and northern Argentina!
For me, the arrival of these birds have symbolized a turn for the better and reinforced my faith in optimism, which spring is, is it not? Now for eternal optimism… 

 May (Bob)

oil on canvas

6x6in, 2010