The #warblers are back! (Well, this "#butterbutt" is at any rate, though perhaps, given our recent gauntlet of snow storms, e wishes e weren't?)

There's an #EmilyDickinson poem hiding in this photo, as this tiny #borb is the sweetest thing in the gale, and no storm has yet abashed it.

#HopeIsTheThingWithFeathers #BackyardBirding #Smol #Oregon

We few, we happy few, we band of bluebirds.

Once more into the trees!

(It's been so grey and rainy here--as you can perhaps tell from the washed-out sky here--that the continued dependability of these Western bluebirds on my neighborhood mountain hikes has been rallying.)

#Birds #Bluebirds #HopeIsTheThingWithFeathers

HOPE

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, written probably around 1861, published posthumously in 1891.

I recently heard this poem in a YouTube short by John Green of the Vlog Brothers, and what stayed with me from that video is how he focused on how Emily wrote how hope 'never stops [singing] at all', and pointed out that while we can't always hear the song of hope, it's still there.

#poetry #poems #poem #EmilyDickinson #hope #HopeIsTheThingWithFeathers #JohnGreen #VlogBrothers