Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, March 3, 1990                   TAG: 9003052160
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EAGERNESS TO END WINTER/SEEING SINISTER SIDE OF ROBINS

There's something slightly sinister about robins, I think. This time of year particularly, when the trees are so nude and vulnerable, the robins' great size shows. Their brown backs look as muddy as the ground, and that makes their reddened breasts look like wounds in pieces of earth.

This has occurred to me about the purpose of robins: It's they who tear apart winter's skin so warmth can run back in. They need their great size, and a certain bloodthirstiness, for such a task, a certain, restless eagerness to get on with Time. Get on with it! Hurry towards spring's renewal, so we can hurry towards the thousand tiny deaths of autumn again.

Two years ago I happened upon a flock of robins settling to roost in our mulberry tree. Underneath and behind their louder, more recognizable cries, they were making a rush of sounds like whispers. It seemed a sound rolled around deep in their throats, or just behind their reddish breasts. I stood very still listening, because I had the feeling that I was hearing something I wasn't supposed to hear, something that only the robins themselves knew and could give voice to. Perhaps an incantation against a late-spring frost. Perhaps litany to make the winter let go. Certainly a spell of some kind. Certainly something magical.

The robins flushed suddenly and flew into other trees farther from the house, but ever since I've been trying to capture in my memory or on paper just exactly what I heard. If I'd seen aliens or the ghost of my great-grandmother, the experience wouldn't have been any more mysterious or inexplicable or threatening. Now whenever I see a robin I remember that flocks' dusky spell-casting, and shiver a little bit.

I used to see robins and think, along with everyone else, that they were just the cheery harbingers of spring. They were sprightly and innocent, the kind of birds you could teach a toddler to recognize and wave at on pretty days.

I can't think that anymore. Such a little thing can change perception so permanently. Robin red-breasts set forth the beginning that, like all beginnings, is the first bloody step toward the end. It would be prudent to take care what you see. But how can you, if you keep your eyes open?