quick-eyed blackbird waits

for crumbs put here on the grass

and when I sit eats

A rescued blackbird lived alone safe from cats in the tangle of a blackberry bush, and came out to wait beside the crumbs I brought him morning and evening. But he would not eat on the day he left until I sat on the grass beside him. I didn't understand, until he had gone.

*****

George Herbert wrote, 'Love bade me welcome,' in the early 1600's. John Taverner wrote a very haunting song of it in the 1960's and Ralph Vaughan Williams also incorporated this poem into his Five Mystical Songs. This is Loreena McKennit singing a song on the same theme by a holy man named John, Juan de la Cruz : 'Cantico Espiritual.'

https://youtu.be/fzHeT-Go4Zg