The Birds Sing Now

I told Ben how loud the birds were singing. It was glorious noise, all that chirping. The disjointed chorus of life after winter. Ben remarked how nice it was to have birds. Remember when I told you how little life there was up here? And his observation all those years ago was true. There was so little life. And what was here curled up like rattlesnakes in yellowed grass, in thorny weeds pressed up against the house.

But when we truly started our little Porch Garden on that barren Mother’s Day back in 2018, life began to show. Life in me, surely. But life spilled out, too. In flowers, in bird-feeders, in birds. Then off the porch in wildflower strewn beds and roses in wild, unkempt ground, in bees, in butterflies. In hummingbirds for flowers not feeders. In a baby swing, a “big kid” swing, a blue playhouse. In tiny sour grapes plucked off the vine and tasted. In laughter.

It feels so wonderful to nurture life in this way. To cultivate the land from hard clay, sludge mud, and coiled snakes to this. To life. To birdsong. To a butterfly on a baby swing.

Of course there are rats and ground squirrels, poisonous snakes and mosquitoes. But there are not only these things anymore. We chose flowers and snow peas, butterflies and bees. And there’s birdsong more often than coiled snakes. Roses more constant than swarming mosquitoes. Rats that steal but never get the final say. Ground squirrels that ravaged but soon gave up on us.

So you see, it’s not perfect. But it is gloriously loud, chirping joy, heart wide open to feelings of June and arms scooping every golden inch of the garden’s light. And it’s knowing June will be again. Good things from the ground and to the sky after every winter, a thousand times over.

This is a place for birdsong not venom and should that venom curl beneath the flowers…we’ll know the truth and smile–

We didn’t build this place for poisonous snakes.

We built it despite them.

I’ll say, “Isn’t this birdsong nice?” And he’ll say, “Remember when?”

My, those can be a lovely two words to hear, to say.

Time has passed and life has come.

rattlesnake climbing into
garden flowerbed
has me glad we made that–
a place for flowers that is.
evil slithering in somewhere good
claims nothing by its presence,
and I smile knowing it.
A transient, poisonous thing–the snake
that ends in a shallow grave.
the flowerbed wasn’t made for them,
or meant for shading snakes.
I wanted roses, made space
for thorns
and it took awhile,
but every time I said,
“I believe I shall look upon
the LORD in the land of the living,”
I did.
untethered now to what ifs,
unrattled by things that do,
poisonous ribbon pressing in,
venom teasing, slithering…
but right to the grave,
as always.
and I in the garden,
anyway,
I in the garden,
still.
-S.V.F. (All That Rattles)