Birdsong

Prove to me that birdsong doesn’t matter
Tell me how
You could possibly not miss:

The cacophony of starlings as they
Dip and sway
Moving like a school of fish,
Smooth, dark shapes against a clear blue sky.

Or the charming
Two-toned call
Of a jaunty robin
Standing with her chest puffed out
The waistcoat of her feathers soft and orange.

Or the collected twittering
Of a gregarious group of bushtits
As they flicker in the shrubbery,
Their small grey bodies darting
In and out as they find bugs to eat or suet to swarm.

Or the almost mechanical
Sound of the black-capped
Chickadees saying their own names
As they travel in twos,
Looking immense next to a bushtit perched on a leaf.

Or the vibrant call
Of a savannah sparrow
Sitting atop a fence post,
Small and brown and unremarkable
Until he opens its mouth to sing a song so lovely it stops the mind.

Prove to me that
You would not miss

Even the loudest squawk of a stellar jay,
Crested head feathers cocked,
Blue body flashing as it walks along
The gutter of your home after pausing for a drink.

Or the
Conversational crackle
And creaking of two
Obsidian-black crows sitting on a wire,
watching the world with clever eyes.

Or the
Piercing call of a
Bald eagle or red-tailed hawk as it leisurely circles
Ever higher, wings extended to
catch an unseen updraft

Or the
Punctuation of a
Flicker at the top of a post,
Declaring its territorial right
After a meal of ants.

Or the
Trilling tone of a
fierce faced wren
As she flicks her striped tail up and down
Hopping from branch to branch.

Convince me
You wouldn’t care

If the small darting
Hummingbirds’ battle cry over
Those flowers
Disappeared.

If the shadowy
Ground-dwelling juncos
Tossing leaves aside
Were no longer.

If the sleek
wax-wing with his
Mascara feathered eyes
Vanished

Never mind
The role they play in the
Web of all things.

Never mind
The end their disappearance
Would signify.

You cannot convince me
Their songs
Do not matter.

Do not mean a thing
To what it is to be human
To be of the Earth
And on it.

You cannot convince me
That you wouldn’t notice
That it wouldn’t matter
That you wouldn’t grieve

If they were gone.

~

I wrote this poem some time ago, after learning about Rachel Carson and the impact of her book Silent Spring. I was moved to write this specifically because Carson talked about people saying “So What? So what if there was no birdsong.”

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