Sign of the Times

Not all the signs I see are good ones.  Today I saw a very pretty, but very sad sign indeed.  As I walked home in the bitter winter cold from my morning yoga class, I passed two
lovely, robust robins on a snow covered lawn just s few houses away from where I live.  Their red breasts were a vivid contrast against the light layer snow on the ground.  Both birds were searching for food in the frozen earth.  It was a beautiful and disturbing sight at the same time.  It's not yet mid-January and these birds had clearly made their migration back to their northern breeding grounds at least a full two months too soon.  Or perhaps they had never migrated south in the fall in the first place.  It's hard to say.
Today's wintry weather was a welcome change to the unseasonably and unnaturally warm winter we've had in these here parts of the true north strong and freezing.  I've fretted for many weeks now about global warming and the serious imbalance in the rhythms of nature.  Seeing the two robins today brought that point home.  I also marvelled at how those birds could have known that we've been having an exceptionally mild winter up here, which would explain why they arrived so early.  How is that possible?  Nature can be as weird as she is wonderful.
There are at least eight weeks of winter weather to endure yet, and despite the fact that it's a freakishly mild one, no doubt there will be a few spells of "normal" winter weather that will likely kill those hapless birds.  Even if they can withstand the cold - and robins are pretty tough as songbirds go - finding food will be a major problem.  They will probably perish from starvation.  Worms, their major food source, stay well below ground level in cold weather.

Those two robins standing on a blanket of snow made a pretty picture, like something you might see on a Christmas card.  But it was also a cautionary sign of more strange and unnatural things to come.  It looked good, but it wasn't right.  Things are terribly off-kilter on this planet of ours.  I fear it might be too late to reverse things.  We will need a miracle to save her, which would be nothing less than all of humanity getting together to change the way we treat her.  That would be a miracle, indeed.
I notice signs.  I heed them.  This is one I wish I hadn't seen.  I pray for those two beautiful birds.  I pray for Mother Earth.  I pray for us all.
Blessed be.
- G.P.