From our rented cottage, we heard
 the plaintive crowing of the roosters
s the birds chirp tentatively. 

The frogs croon all night in the creek—
plotting out their amorous desires,
jewels, their intentions of melding. 

We are the chorus in the tree branches.
What does our music foretell?
We know things you humans do not dare tell.

You have said we do not know of the future.
This is not evident to us. There is insistence
in our bird song. 

The whir of the cars intertwines in the breeze
gentle and insistent as the pink money plant
right outside our door. A chicken with 

exquisite brown feathers pecks along
the garden path. How do these beings
relate and declare interdependence?

Spotted goats and black furry young
bide behind the fence with brown ducks.
They scurry upon the arrival of barking black 

and white dogs. The bird song is clear
though sparse. The sound of the creek
moving over the boulders is constant. 

The flight of the sparrow from tree to
wooden fence top is an inquiry into threat.
They all wonder if they will live long now. 

We want to talk to them, to apologize, to ask
if they will require anything from our species
— probably not. We have been architects 

of their doom. They sing. We were told long
go it was our destiny to sing. We now know
our destiny is to listen, to ask, to intone — 

to admit how our interrelationship with
 the land where the birds exist and
to imagine how we might aid them 

This needs to be our focus rather than the fear
 of illness and dying of our kind. We need to
 honor that we are all interrelated. That this

 Is the path to the wild and possible future.