All The Birds in the Air Fell to Sighing and Sobbing

When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin.

Birds.

I don’t think about them all day, but many, many times a day and often as I fall asleep and as I wake. They are a constant here. At the windows, in the branches of the old lilac bushes and the honeysuckle, on the willows and in the dandelions, by the creek, over at the stone circle, in the air. 

I think about who is struggling and who is thriving. I wonder where they are if they are not here. Who died against a window last night in a too-well-lit city of glass, or lost their flock flying over a field of toxic waste? Who is searching for a familiar patch of forest that doesn't exist anymore? Who is eating the last insect on a tree we’ve sprayed with poisons? Will our flock of Evening Grosbeaks return this year and where are the Great Blue Herons? And what of the majestic Sandhill Crane we discovered on the trail home the other day? His tender heart eaten out by an eagle. 

I ask you

Who killed Cock Robin

Who will mourn him?

Who will make his shroud?

I haven’t always even been aware of birds. I haven’t always known their names or their habits.  I was born at the edge of the Pacific Ocean and spent my childhood on Haida Gwaii. As a child, I made friends with ferns and rocks and played in the ancient forest. Later I lived in towns and cities on the mainland but was never versed in bird song.

Over a quarter century ago I fell in love with a man who knows birds, and together we fell in love with this land and now I know some of the birds by name and some by their songs, and some who flit from tree to tree with me when I go walking.

This place, these 48 acres where I walk, where I talk to the birds, this place where I live and work and wander has become my greatest teacher. Her birds have my full attention.

This planet in these times must be a confusing home for anyone with wings. For the Swifts and Barn Swallows whose numbers are in serious decline. It’s already too late for the ivory-billed woodpecker, the tiny Hawaiian Honeycreeper, Bachman’s warbler. And have you read Orison for a Curlew?

The earth and all her inhabitants are asking for our focused and tender attention.

We are losing birds and we are losing their songs.

Who will mourn them? 

Who will make their shrouds? 

My friend Danna recently shared a poem on her Substack: 

The Crows Start Demanding Royalties by Lucia Perillo. 

It begins: “Of all the birds, they are the ones who mind their being armless most…”

Until I read this poem, I had never considered that birds might envy us our arms when all we want are wings.

I’ve had this project percolating for more than a few years using the verses from The Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin. With this project, I’m seeking to deepen our connection with life and death, with the natural world and our place in it. This poignant ballad first published in 1744 describes the tasks and rituals surrounding death in the 18th century. Tasks and rituals being reclaimed today by those of us who are remembering that our dead belong to us.

I’m still not sure where I’m going with this. If I were younger and if I lived among people, I would conjure up an outdoor performance, a pageant, a parade with magnificent masks & costumes. Now in my 67th year from my remote, off-grid home in the Chilcotin Forest, I’m thinking of a virtual pageant with online participation. I’m envisioning this as a way to encourage conversations around death and dying. Conversations and creative expressions addressing the Anthropocene, climate grief, the extinction of our insects and mosses and birds and animals; the ways we meet death. 

And All the birds in the air

Fell to sighing and sobbing,

When they heard the bell toll

For poor Cock Robin.

There is more to come of birds and burial shrouds and conversations. I’ll be offering an online workshop or two. I’ll meet you here if you want to come along.