It stayed awhile and flew away.
That was my first poem. I was five-years-old. The first robin of the year marked the end of winter and the beginning of spring. Every frigid morning in February I looked for that bird, wanting to be the first on our street to announce that spring was on its way. All these decades later not much has changed. The five-year-old inside of me still looks up at gray skies, still searches the yard between the patches of melting snow, still hopes to find the promise of spring.