There’s a song thrush outside my house. I think maybe it’s broken. It doesn’t sound like anything I have ever heard before. It shouts from the tree, like an angry drunk; repetitive and desperate.
I wonder why it doesn’t have a proper song, or why it is so cross, I wonder why it couldn’t learn like the others or if the bastard cat ate it’s mum.
I spend a fair bit of time listening to birds. I hear them so loud, I stop when I am walking to listen, am always surprised that others haven’t stopped too, How do we keep on in our day to day, with these songs all around us. I lean out the second storey of the building I work in, looking for the Black caps my phone says are near.
That clanking shriek bookends my day with the inevitable darkness, I sit after my shift in the car with the window down, or lean with my forehead to the glass in the house, my own breath obscuring the view. Moments of calm listening to that racket, distract me form the bedlam in this house, or in my head.
When the madness of this swirling life surrounds me, there is a noisy peace in the top of the silver birch, with the watery warbling of goldfinches, the squeaky great tits, and that one howling song thrush.
Me and that bird hollering out at the world, out of tune, possibly broken and most definitely alone.
Gorgeous ❤️