Earlier this week, Margaret Renkl wrote in her column in The New York Times to “enfold ourselves in small comforts.” I needed this reminder, and found this small comfort on one of my morning walks.
A multitude of goldfinches,
trilling and chittering
like windchimes,
pierce the stillness of dawn
as they rise over the meadow:
drops of liquid sunshine.
Draft © Catherine Flynn, 2020
Please be sure to visit my critique group partner and poet extraordinaire, Heidi Mordhorst, at My Juicy Little Universe for the Poetry Friday Roundup.
Reading to the Core 
I’ve only seen & heard those goldfinches in the mountains, Catherine & they really are “like windchimes”. It is good to find the ways to ease one’s mind. I love your poem!
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Oh, I love this. I have seen so many goldfinches this year. They remind me of my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Maker who taught us bird species. The chittering and trilling is such an uplifting sound to me. Thank you, Catherine.
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Just googled goldfinch so I could listen to their song and discovered that it’s our state bird. One never stops learning with a little help from our friends. I know the state bird of Oklahoma, (scissor tail flycatcher), but didn’t know the state bird of my home state for the past 23 years! And their song is beautiful.
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Love your liquid sunshine. Goldfinches are so beautiful.
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Goldfinches have all but disappeared from our neighborhood. I can still remember the first one I ever saw (we didn’t have them back home in Eastern Colorado) and how it’s color and lilting flight took my breath away. Thank you for giving me a whole flock in your poem!
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I won’t be able to look at a goldfinch without thinking “drops of liquid sunshine”. Thank you for that. 🙂
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Like Ramona, I looked up the goldfinch sound since I have never seen one. It is musical. The images I like in your poem are:
“like windchimes,
drops of liquid sunshine.”
Thanks for the morning sunshine, Catherine.
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Drops of liquid sunshine conveys so much; visually and aurally. Also pure lovely!
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Beautiful images, the birds and the sunshine to carry with me today.
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Such a lovely line and image your goldfinches bring us, “drops of liquid sunshine!” We’ve had the pleasure throughout summer of numerous visits by a ruby throated humming bird, thanks Catherine.
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I love that description, drops of liquid sunshine
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[…] tree. Goldfinches truly do bring me joy. I’ve written at least twice about their merry-making. (Here and here) In that moment, in the words of musician Mic Jordan, their “music [was] medicine” to […]
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