Refilling the Sky

Refilling the Sky

Listen. Earth’s wild music calls

                    and rings us like a bell.

Attend to the wings fallen silent:

Great Auk. Labrador duck.

Passenger pigeon. Carolina parakeet. Heath hen.

Once, their tribes 

bloomed, like yellow orchids suspended in air.

They circled the skies dense as cumulo-nimbus clouds.

clawed the earth, which was their birthright,

and rippled the waters with their paddled feet.

We’re left with

gaping fields and forest,

vacuums in sky and stream.

Great Auk. Labrador duck.

Passenger pigeon. Carolina parakeet. Heath hen.

The wind sighs their names in the roll call 

of the hunted and the lost.

Great Auk. Labrador duck.

Passenger pigeon. Carolina parakeet. Heath hen.

            But call hurrahs for our recovered and reclaimed:

Bald eagle. Peregrine falcon. Osprey. 

Welcome back. Welcome home. Bless our skies.

Bald eagle. Peregrine falcon. Osprey.

          Our “more than human” family sings

in the backyard of your heart’s afternoon:

Meadowlark, Redwing blackbird. Grasshopper sparrow. Bobolink.

Earth’s wild music rises      and rings us like a bell

you only have to listen.

Notes: This poem was inspired by The Lost Bird Project, a series of sculptures by artist Todd McGrain, which recognizes the tragedy of modern extinction. Some of the language in this poem was inspired by Orion Magazine’s video conversation Celebrating Old Growth: A Conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert McFarlane, and David Haskell.