They are busy defining territories nevertheless. And singing their hearts out like the Italians in quarantine singing from their balconies. It is a dark and strange time with uncertainty clouding every day. I am so grateful that it is also early spring with nature’s healing of pain and loss, and the birds carrying on with their daily business.

“Hope is the thing with feathers 
That perches in the soul 
And sings the tune without the words 
And never stops at all 

And sweetest in the gale is heard 
And sore must be the storm —
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm —

I've heard it in the chillest land —
And on the strangest sea —
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb — of me.”

-Emily Dickinson, 1861 (another dark time)

P.S. April is National Poetry Month. Reading last year’s most-read poem, Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness” is one of the Academy of American Poets 30 ways to celebrate National Poetry Month online and at home