This year’s nests

Published on by Laura Bloomsbury

“Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth,
   To some good angel leave the rest;
For Time will teach thee soon the truth,
  There are no birds in last year’s nest!” *

Longfellow “It is not Always May”
A robin is not just for Christmas
kitsch cards and rosy redbreast in sentimental snow
- this blooded bully with matador caped chest
and eye, beady sharp as scissored beak
is salve for wakeful winter midnights
compulsive songster under urban neon lights
or moonlight when the earth is frozen blue 

Old World flycatcher following the fork
in Spring, worm grubber, collector
of caterpillar, beetle and mite
an eclectic palette that makes the gardener smile 

this sometime shadow of a scarlet pimpernel
at the periphery or perched, bold bosomed, on the spade
silent as summer is long before the months of melancholy
mount the moulted throat and I hear in muttered sub song
how winter goeth even before the Fall
- but here is March and eggs, buff pink and specked
already being warmed in this year's nests

*”No hay pajaros en los nidos de antano”. an old Spanish proverb but for now it is the March equinox and the first day of Spring for Northern Hemispherers. And here’s a Robin on the wing in the Imaginary Garden’s Tuesday Platform!

20 thoughts on “This year’s nests”

    1. and there is also ‘gather ye rosebuds while ye may’ but the Robin is for every season

  2. So very nice, Laura. I loved the robins, we don’t have them here. And our Spring, it came back for one day, 71°F for today, yesterday 87°F and will be 80’s for the rest of the week (East Texas Gulf Coast area). The hatching and babies don’t get much press, yours seem also to be fairly private. When one leaves too early and sits on the ground for a while is when I see them, very vulnerable for attacks.
    ..

    1. still the UK’s favourite bird precisely because they are so tame – following the gardener as I dig!

  3. I dont see them here. They sound quite charming and likeable. According to your poem. All i knew of them are the postcard images

    Much🌼love

  4. I never see robins in winter…. but when they come it’s great… but I can hear the tits singing… and there are blackbirds coming. They are just waiting for the grip of ice to loosen

    1. Robins are an enchanting subject but the theme of the poem is really rooted in the Longfellow quote

    1. An attempt to write like John Clare perhaps though with added symbolism!

  7. I love robins, Laura! We have several that visit our garden and one that alights on the hedge when I arrive home. It sits and sings to me as I open the front door. I love the lines:
    ‘compulsive songster under urban neon lights
    or moonlight when the earth is frozen blue’
    and
    ‘this sometime shadow of a scarlet pimpernel
    at the periphery or perched, bold bosomed, on the spade’,
    especially the alliteration on ‘p’!

    1. many thanks for your feedback Kim – I was carried away by my love for the subject and hoped the poetry was not lost in there – or the alliteration!

  8. kaykuala

    How one longs and expects for Spring to come by very quickly. The love for the greenery is universal, Laura!

    Hank

  9. I don’t know which I love more robins or your imagery of them here 🙂 This is gorgeous!💞

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