When I Was a Songbird

When I Was a Songbird

 “Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.” 

― Terry Tempest Williams, "When Women Were Birds"

Once I was a barn swallow,

nearly eight years old,

a mother many times.

It was almost over, my bird-life,

my nesting,

my teaching fledglings to fly.

That last spring of mine, 
I swooped over patchwork towns and gardens,

over woods and meadowlands,

searching for a snug barn where I’d nested one summer.

It was no longer there,

the homely cobwebbed place where we’d raised our young.

A human or two had torn it down;

the barn gone, the fields fenced.

Houses side by side by side.

Before, there'd been pasture, a farm—

black and white cows,

a scowling, snorting bull,

hens clucking and flapping, roosters strutting,

cloistered owls, hawks hunting,

danger—
and oaks for sanctuary.

This time, I flew for hours, 
sizing up niches for possibility.

No abode for me.

Only the children noticed my swoop over their fenced yards.

They heard my homeless song,

and looked up with moist, mirroring eyes.

I wanted to sing something

to sadden the offspring of my home-wreckers,

a bitter song—or even angry. . .

Then, I saw their round, unfeathered faces,

their tender cheeks, the color of clay I'd use to fasten my nest,

their eyes larger than my eggs.

My heart went out to them,

my thimble-sized heart,

weightless in men's hands,

but as expansive as a star.

So, I sang to heal this world,

to heal the flightless, featherless ones,

the ones who buy up the earth,

who dirty their dwelling places,

who fence in their children,

and cage us birds.

I sang to heal my homelessness,

because

if you can sing when you rise,

you’re halfway home—

and then,

if you can sing again

as the sun disappears,

you’re home all the way.

@Copyright by Claire Germain Nail, June 2016