the unimaginable profundity of existence

Every morning, almost exactly 20 minutes before the sun spills over the horizon, a chorus of birds sing a song outside my window. It’s the same song each morning: beautiful and complex, it sounds like a dialogue from which a beautiful song emerges. It is amazing and it confounds me every day. 

I imagine a great flock of songbirds: sparrows, robins, magpies. So vast, it spans the poles. Like the front line of a great choreographed march across the sky. In my mind, the birds all tug at the light like a blanket, pulling and stretching it across the sky. The light groans its way across the contours of our age-worn earth like water slowly filling all voids. 

And like clockwork, when the sun becomes visible in the sky the birds are gone, as quickly as they arrived. The dialogue dwindles to a single bird. A single last chirp and the ritual passes, continuing this great dance across the sky.

They’re coming a little earlier every day in spring, and I’m humbled by this small wonder and this glimpse into the unimaginable profundity of existence.