Indigo Bunting, Jamie K. Reaser (with thanks)
Dawn chorus sunrise
Songs l forgot how to hear
Try again, they say.
Kristopher Drummond
(with thanks)
I'm awake at 2 in the morning listening to a blackbird singing in the dead of a dark night. As you may know from previous blogsongs, l’m usually woken by him nearer to the dawning. But, here, now, at 2am he doesn’t stop singing all night. How can l not stay awake, attentive, listening with his lyrical tunes echoing around the ancient stone walls of Dunbar and inside my open heart. He stands, singing from the top of the telegraph pole which gives him the echoing sounding stage. It’s like he's singing a homage to an invisible God/Goddess, and maybe he too is feeling the return of the sun to the Northern Hemisphere. All night long, he just keeps singing on; all night, as if the very world’s breath depends on his song to continue.
When was the last time you felt that way, awake all night in praise and wonder as if your song and listening mattered that much for the world’s breath to continue?
I continue wondering what is so different about this particular night when he sings so exquisitely until after sunrise. Is he serenading his beauty lover who comes to my garden door for sultanas? Perhaps he's delighting with the forthcoming creative nesting and egg season. They have a nest here with many other birds including blue tits and great tits on the old wall covered in thick ivy at the end of my garden. Last year these two birds alone hatched five chicks throughout the summer months, and who, delightedly for me, also sang at my door.
I’ve not known him to sing through a night before. Other birds begin to join in. First the seagulls. They are very loud with their intelligent array of cries that l need to listen intently to find, yes, he is still singing out! Then the sparrow, wrens, and ring-necked doves sing into this now symphony.
An image arrives: invisible chord strands creating webs of the world being sung into being in a way life is born to sing; the blackbird knows.
Currently, chord strands are not being sung in and from our dominant human cultures to the Earth and Earth Community; songs that offer weavings out, into and from the webs of Earth. Perhaps ozone and other unholy holes are made when humans don’t join in the Earthsong, don't sing into and honour the invisible webs of being. Perhaps instead falling awake all night in sleepless stress and grief, feeling with Earth's body.
Nature-based indigenous cultures know this, of course; know the particular magic and enchantments needed in now weaving the forgotten imaginal fields of song and sound, the particular tunes that each one of us brings to sing. Perhaps our activism in these urgent times is needed as much in the intangible realms as the tangible; learning once more to connect with unsung songs.
So when was the last time you stayed awake or woken by an honour tending singing, with a feeling of something beyond you unseen and maybe just waiting on the edge of your awareness for you to move towards? What if this magnificent and holy Earth is depending on just that, on you listening, singing notes that only you can sing in all time into the webs of the world. Here's just the opportunity for you.
Sing on, you reverences …
Blackbird song in the early hours of late March 2023
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Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus, Saturday 1 April at dawn wherever you are around Earth. You are invited to sing into different kinds of webs, weave with life as if it really matters … listen … Earthsong ...
Please share with one person, then if they share with another….. the wave will grow. See the website link below for resources for this self organised ‘Feed the Earth’ Ceremony. There are also postings on the Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus 2023 Facebook Page. You can read many other beauty blogsongs from many singers, poets, artists and more on the Earthsongwave.com blog page link below.
Whilst Earthsongwave Dawn Chorus is a self organised ceremony, you are also welcome to send in experiences. We love to read/see/listen to them.
Wend is a Renaissance woman-creature, a wild nature-based soul guide and mentor, poet, writer, photographer, teacher. With a Cailleach’s Eye she sees, listens and speaks words and questions who are more like portals into further mysteries. She invites and sparks us deeper into the curiosity and wonder of being reshaped and sung rather than neat solutions and answers. She is a life-time agent of cultural evolution, devoted to Earth's Dreaming and human transformation as part of Earth Community.