Celeste Snowber: Birdsong lessons

What do the birds teach us
in these times of pandemic?

Vocalizing sounds as music
greeting dawn in a universal language
where tweets, cackles, trills, pecks
are a prayer unto themselves
monovocal melodies from song sparrows
pitch, tempo, beats and whistles
vibrato of feathers, buzzes of warblers

Dialects and tones of plumage
go beyond boundaries

Is there not an iconography of winged creatures
inviting us to recollect what to feed on?

Swallows forage in the sky
we need manna from the heavens
soul food in times of difficulty.

I come from a lineage
of Armenian genocide survivors
where sustenance from above
inspired steps to move forward

and once again
consider birdsong.

Published in the Armenian Weekly