Dawn Chorus

Drink: Rum

by Sandy Wilson

rum

The cool morning wind coursing though his hair brought a memory to Billy. He is a small boy sat on the rustic bench outside his grandfather’s cottage waiting for the sun to rise. The old man steps out of the front door. They smile at each other and before his grandfather sits; he ruffles Billy’s blond curls with his broad hand.

 

“Present arms!”

 

They savour the silence for a while, then as the dawn chorus begins his grandfather, who had been a gamekeeper on the estate, tells him about the birds that are singing. How the skylarks, song thrushes, robins and blackbirds are the first to sing. Then the wrens and warblers, more sensitive to the coldness of dawn, join in. The still dawn air carrying nature’s hymns.

 

“Take Aim!”

 

Then, when the light brightens and food, the seeds and insects, are easier to find, the chorus fades.

He can see his grandfather now sat on the bench hunched forward, chin resting on the hands that grip his walking stick. He turns and smiles.

 

Billy felt the warmth of the rising sun on his face. It was going to be a fine day.

 

“Fire!”

 

Surprised at the sudden volley, the audience of crows rose cawing from the surrounding trees in a cloud of black feathers and flew into the brightening sky.

About the author

Sandy Wilson writes memoirs, fiction and the occasional poem. His memoir Memory Spill recalls a Scottish childhood during the 1950s and 60s. He is a member of Otley Writers and has contributed to and published anthologies of their work The Pulse of Everything and The Darkening Season. His poems have been included in the international poetry anthology ‘Indra’s Net’.

Sandy blogs as sandyscribbler.com