WINGS FROM SILENCE

Leucistic Blackbird scuttleflusters 

Slantwise into hidey hedge

Wondering unhumble at its own

Soul-sweet difference

Sevenly splendid Ladybird

Beacons its unhidden

Abacus wings from silence

As suddenly as Spring

Both are beauty

Glory enfolds them both

Floozy Fascinator

Butterscotch bisque

Burns introvert borders

Hot helter

Smiling seedhead 

Xanthous canary

Catherine wheel

Squawks shadows

On scorched grass

Imploding sun

Throbbing plateful

Blonde as quince

Lapped in lemon 

Stalk quiet strength

Leaves downy shrug

Mouse ear and mink

Headliner showstop above

Where gaze won't wink

A ladybird

Sleeping in death 

After first settling 

In its baked blood

Like a ruby stud

Nods asymmetric

In floozy fascinator

Missing a treat?

"Everything glowed with a gleam.
Yet we were looking away" (Thomas Hardy, "The Self Unseeing")

I went out with my camera into the garden today, hoping to capture the technicolour tulips. They've only just begun to flower. At the weekend they were being modest. Slim buds giggling in corners for the wind to nudge and snigger over. Now they're splaying their innermost secrets for the sunshine to smile into!

 

When I reached the gorse bush at the far end near the shed, I began to snap the blossoms there, too. I cranked up the close-up macro focus...

It was only then I noticed the ladybird...

 We often focus on the showy ones. The ones who demand attention. The loud and the shouty things.

We risk missing the precious tiny things God's put there for us to delight in.

The loss is ours if we do. But we hear the echoes of our Father weeping with disappointment that his treat didn't make our day complete.