Music of the Spheres Heralding Spring

The early mornings of first spring are usually cold and often very still. Before the wind and sun spring up, the air feels frozen and lifeless. Then the music will begin. Soft and a little wavery, the sweet notes come from the weeds and fill the silence. The jumble of twitters that follows is so soft you have to strain to hear it. It is the song of the sparrow.

In earlier times it was thought that heaven was in the stars, far beyond human reach. Only our voices raised in song could reach those sacred places, and those voices were pale imitations of the songs that already rang there, the music of the spheres. We know now that earth angels are the only singers there are, and the only music in outer space is what we send there.

But we do send it, because the human heart is full of song, attuned to song. We all need to make music and receive it back, even those of us who say we have no 'voice.' For us, making and hearing music is as close as we can come to a sense of communion with the universe. All creatures seem to share in that sense, especially the birds, and most especially the songbirds.

The voices of small perching birds are so special that we give this group the name 'songbird,' and only one species of bird has the word in its very own name, the song sparrow. The song sparrow on a cold March morning is heaven enough for me, but there is a bird song even more divine than that.

One day last week the southwest winds brought balmy air from the south to New England's chilled hills. I sat on the edge of a large field, scanning the skies to find a hawk or two on its way north, heading for home, the urge for family in its hollow bones. There was something else I hoped to see, and especially hear.

Nearby the king of song began to tune up. There is a song sparrow and a kingbird, but the king of song is the mockingbird. Here in the warmth of mid-day, this master of the mimic was warming up. He was on a phone wire, close enough so I could see his throat throbbing, one note cascading out after another in an endless flurry. Even so, it was only a spring rehearsal, and the song was soft and slow, not the frenzy of joy when mating and hatching are at hand.

He sang the songs of jays and titmice as well as his own variations, and then he sang the song of the phoebe. That was the voice I was waiting for, the little flycatcher that is the sign of second spring. Was this mocker taunting me? Perhaps he was prescient, or just more observant.

Near the top of a tall tree not far away, a small bird with a familiar posture sat very still, with only the slight twitch of a tail to make my thoughts leap. It couldn't be a phoebe, but it was. After a moment the bird launched into the air and swooped down directly at me, as if bringing me a message from heaven. He landed not ten feet away in a small bush, my first phoebe of the new millennium.

Did the mockingbird know? Could he recognize the shape of the phoebe as well as his song? Did the song he sang alert me to look around and fulfill my fuzzy hope? The simple phoebe song is not a common part of the mockingbird's repertoire. I choose to think the music was made for me, or at least for dreams, human or divine.

Birds sing for a simple reason - it helps to create and fledge young to continue life into a new and certain future. Perhaps our songs have the same purpose, to link us with the past and future and to each other. Is that what the ancients meant when they spoke of the music of the spheres?