Blackbirds Don’t Win

A wasp whipped past my ear, and Spring made her entrance.

Nobody called it that. The sky was blue, the air warm, East Texas signing her name in pollen across every surface that would hold it. But free is rarely as simple as it looks.

The blackbirds came first. They always do. Hundreds of them during January and now, soaring in dark rivers over my rooftop, banking wide and landing heavy at my feeders. There’s a boldness to them, a this-belongs-to-us swagger that scatters everything gentler in their wake. And I watched what happened next.