Day 147 Special Performance

May 5, 2015

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70th year where I write and illustrate a blog on each day's gift.)

Silence wraps itself around my neighborhood in the late hour and I step outside to look up at a clear sky. The season’s newly colored trees turn to silhouettes against the deep blue sky perforated by white pinholes. The moon has taken residence just west of the scene I am watching. 

I breathe in this spring stage, feeling the moment. Nearby, a serenade begins—a solo by a Carolina wren as far as my untrained ear can discern. It is actually a concert of many songs—this singer has a repertoire of as many as 40 songs and I think he is practicing them all tonight. In the stillness of the night, I may be his sole audience. His favorite song seems to be one that sounds like “Cherry, cherry, cherry, cherry.” Another section has variations on the theme with a few staccatos thrown in. As he continues the songs, I imagine the lyrics change from “cherry” to “Bonnie” 

I cannot see this bird but it is enough to hear the music against a blue speckled backdrop and to imagine his peers perching in the wings of his celestial concert hall. As I listen, my body becomes a sitar with sympathetic strings vibrating to each note of the performance. Maybe this experience is a personification of peace—I don’t know. But what I do know is that as long as one voice stabs the night with a song, there is resonance in the soul.

My gift today is a serenade.

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You can find links to my other posts on this project here:
http://bjschupp.blogspot.com/2014/12/365-gifts.html