“The sound of the sandhill cranes is like the roaring of the sea in a conch shell; when you
have finally heard it, you recognize that you have always known it. It is like the cry of a loon
or the howling of wolves or the warning rattle of a snake, an article in the universal language.”
— Paul Gruchow, “The Nebraska Sandhills: The Flight of Cranes,” from The Necessity of Empty Places
I’ve heard their cry described
as someone thumb-pianoing the tines of a comb.
Their call rakes sky in the direction of their passing,
startles my cooped hens who have learned
to keep their beaks to the ground, seeking grain. Cranes
call again, and from the closed coop,
my hens answer: a warble as best they can manage,
They sound sweetly surprised, as if awoken
from an armchair nap, and I wonder,
what in their hen hearts bears the familiar?
Do egg, albumen, hold memory as code
throughout avian evolution? Does it
slide along spiraled time and coiled chalaza
corded to owl and dove, spreading then through
pinion and feather? Is it tied to these ancient ones,
sandhill cranes, who paint themselves ochre,
and migrate along rivers in the sky our eyes cannot see?
Standing in my snow-melted Midwestern farm field,
I wonder why migration’s call stirs wings in my veins,
fans desire to rise and follow —
Then, Oh then! —
to which ocean?
—
Catherine Young, a disabled writer and performing artist, is author of the environmental memoir Black Diamonds: A Childhood Colored by Coal and the ecopoetry collection Geosmin. Her prose and poetry are published in anthologies and literary journals internationally and nationally. She worked as a national park ranger, farmer, educator, and mother. She loves meandering streams and deeply believes in the use of story for transforming the world. Find her Landward podcasts and writings at: www.catherineyoungwriter.com
