Waxwings [View all]

[WilliamPitt]

A flock of about 40 cedar waxwings descended upon the cherry tree outside my office window this morning just as the snow was starting, and proceeded to strip it clean of the remaining cherries. I caught this picture of four of them...and then a friend reminded me of the Robert Francis poem. Just too perfect.

Waxwings

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berry bush
in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety--
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk--
was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together--for this I have abandoned
all my other lives.

- Robert Francis