It’s a distinctly dreary, overcast day. So I decided some bright color was in order.

So...birds. I think about them a lot these days. My next novel, 27, was thought up years ago while walking back and forth to work listening to the Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughn Williams. This musical poem was also inspired by the written word—a poem by the same name authored by George Meredith.

Birds have meaning. Birds show us how to live.

I’ve read a lot of poems lately. Quite a few about birds. Some are nice, but some are more true than others. Here’s a true poem:

The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
— Thomas Hardy

I am going to be writing a lot about the meaning of birds in my newsletter and blog in the coming weeks. Because once you understand what birds mean, you’ll “get” 27. So...make sure to sign up for my newsletter! Here’s the link:

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