Language of the Birds

a robin sings — 
his story enters your 
morning’s first moments 
and takes you in a direction 
you didn’t plan for 

all day, the two of you converse: 
about the value of moist ground 
and sturdy branches;
the joy of nestlings who flew;
worms and warm rain drops; 
and a fallen twig that drifts and spins
on a swift-flowing stream
that carries a pregnant spider

🕷️ 

at night, in your dreams 
you ride with the spider 
downstream through dark pipes 
and hidden culverts; 
beneath city streets and 
crumbling asphalt parking lots;
into underground sewers
and out through secret moonlit marshes 
grown over with bog goldenrod 
and purple swamp aster;
until finally, you tumble 
from a storm drain into the river 
and pull yourself up on the bank  

she will have her children there
and you will look back
from your nearsighted eyes
and try to remember a story
you heard one morning

---

This poem is about motherhood and migration. I am grateful to the robin for telling me about the floating twig he saw that carried the mother spider who was about to lay her egg sac and for reminding me to write about Sawmill Creek which flows from the South Nation Watershed north through my neighbourhood, under city streets, through drain pipes, alongside tall apartment buildings and strip mall parking lots until it arrives at the Rideau River near Billings Bridge.

Many of us who live in the city are unaware of the extensive underground waterways that are buried beneath us. In researching this poem, I was happy to find out about the practice of ‘daylighting’ underground urban waterways by bringing them back to the surface where possible and integrating them into urban landscapes. This is becoming more popular with city planners all over the world as a way to control flood damage and to beautify urban landscapes.

Here is a fantastic interactive CBC story by Jaela Bernstien and Emily Chung about hidden rivers in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.

Music pairing: Language of the Birds by the incredible Wendy McNeill:

may these words bring truth and healing
through open hands and hearts
and then, let it flow back into our Mother Earth
for the love of all her beings.

Robin image: Wikipedia Commons, adapted with Prisma Oil