"Hope is the Thing with Feathers"

Thank you, Emily Dickinson. Even though that poem is not my favorite of yours (I like the shocking ones like, "Because I would not stop for Death/He kindly stopped for me––").

But still, these are the words that come to me over coffee as I sit watching the birds at the feeder. 

Who doesn't like a bird-feeder? (Answer: don't even tell me. Killjoys.)

There's a nice variety swooping in the first week of April: nuthatches and chickadees, house finches and gold finches, cedar waxwings and juncos. (My sister intones "There's a rumble in the junco!")  Plus flickers and downy woodpeckers, robins and pigeons, red-winged blackbirds, a single determined crow goose-stepping at the perimeter. 

The birds are at war, I think, despite how they sound chipper and some poets might suggest they embody hope. They are always skirmishing over seed at the feeder. Or chasing off potential suitors. Or courting like overcharged sixth-graders.

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It's a little like watching the television news. Only a little less bloodless and a lot less duplicitous.