Tag: birds

Ash Wednesday Walk

On By Anna EastlandIn Photos4 Comments

I captured this moment on a rare early morning walk alone on Ash Wednesday. My luxurious excuse for alone time? A 35 week pregnancy blood test. Yup, living it up here.

But I must say, the peaceful morning bird song and the sight of their feathers illumined from below by early sunrise were a treat. Since my pace right now is best described as moseying, I tried to make the best of it by taking time to notice the beauty above the city streets.

Despite the barren lack of leaves in the trees, tiny signs of spring could also be found at my feet.

After another long pandemic winter, it’s nice to see hints of hope…warmer days coming, brighter days, and new things, like my baby, in about a month!

These brave crocuses in my garden even survived our recent snowfall! So while I feel pretty much ready to wave the white flag and give up—enough winter, enough covid, enough late pregnancy—I’ll try to be brave and keep looking up to find the sun, and looking forward to those precious newborn snuggles, and remembering the reason it will all be worth it come spring.

Early

On By Anna EastlandIn Poetry2 Comments

Early in the morning,

in the delicious quiet

before anyone else is awake,

I leave aside my troubled dreams

and get up to feed the birds.

It’s a windy morning.

The kids’ toys in my yard are all tumbled about

and the crows feathers are ruffled

as the await their breakfast

on the telephone wires.

I open the window to throw them bread crusts.

The cool morning air

greets me like a brisk breeze from a boat,

fresh and hopeful

as if the day itself

was dreaming of adventure.

“Poèmes en Route de la Poubelle”

On By Anna EastlandIn Family Life, Poetry2 Comments

You know when you’ve been stuck inside for a few weeks with sick kids, and your world has become very small and stuffy (yes, we’ve been keeping the window open, but still…), and you almost forget that anything exists behind your front door? And then you have the chance to emerge, even briefly, into the sunshine to take out the trash, and everything is so fresh and crisp and incredibly beautiful that you start spouting poetry? Well, that’s been happening to me lately.

The neighbours must shake their heads as I gaze around like a love-struck mole emerging from her tunnels and start blabbering ecstatically:

It’s so beautiful! There’s a whole world out here! The sun is so shiny and the birds are so chirpy! My soul rejoiceth whilst removing the rubbish…

Aha, there she goes again. The garbage poet. It’s pathetic. Always writing about trash.

Well, as long as my poems don’t actually belong in the garbage…

Perhaps Oscar the Grouch and I could write a book together. One of those great debate books…two opposing figures hash it out about life, love and excursions to the garbage can.
We’ll be fancy and call it “Poèms en route de la poubelle.”

I had been feeling a bit like this:

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So I took a brief back yard escape:

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And saw green and growing things like rosemary:

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And winter kale:

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A pretty statue:

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A little escapee who flew over the fence of her coop:

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The others watched her so longingly as she grubbed for worms that I released them, too.

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They made such a mess mucking about in the fresh manure in the garden that they had to return to their confinement, and me to my duties…Meanwhile my three year old had snuck upstairs to my friendly neighbours, wailing in search of her missing mummy, whose aforementioned excursion outside was of unacceptable duration…

Ah, but it was beautiful while it lasted…