Poems by Nadia Colburn

Where Is the Upflying?

by Nadia Colburn

From Canary Spring 2022

Nadia lives on the land of the Masachusett people not far from the Quinobequin River and close to the smaller Menotomy River, where there were once plentiful fish and fishing.

Whole flocks of geese in my childhood honking their way North—

The streets dirty with pigeons—

The sky blackened by starlings: each small, pointed wing so close to another’s it was just a blur—

Now only sparrows in the thick shrub branches—thousands of them—so many more
than we humans—twittering at first light.

And yet, how many have been lost?

Three billion birds are missing.

We wake to so many forms of emptiness;

so many forms of loss greet us in our sleep.

In my childhood, I thought the world I’d entered

would be the world I’d exit.

There, in the poplar, one bird sings—