I Heard The Bird Sing

This morning, as I was gathering dead twigs in my front yard to deposit into the trash can, I heard my Chirpadee calling from somewhere high above me in my neighbor's far-reaching oak tree. I thought he was dead. I thought my cat killed him. But he's alive, and that makes me happy. I don't know why. He's just a small wild bird I've never seen but whom I've heard early in the morning (around 6 a.m.) for years, trilling in a loud melancholy voice, all alone out there in the quiet of my sleepy neighborhood, sending his message into the still-darkness of an emerging dawn. There's never an answering call from another bird. Just him, alone.

I missed his voice, but now it's back. Did he go on vacation for a week? Did he lose a territorial war to find himself relegated to my westside neighbor's yard instead of outside my eastside bedroom window? Did he decide to move next door, after all these years we've been together? What's up, little Chirpadee?  I'll never know. That's the thing about wildlife - they move on or die, and I never know what happened, but I miss their presence in my yard because a little bit of wildlife in my urban world opens up the parameters of my "civilized" human spirit, allowing me to experience the wildness in me that I left far behind in my childhood.