Sam Malley ’25 - A Bird’s Song

A Bird’s Song

by Sam Malley ’25

In many ways, a bird can be seen as a symbol of many things; of peace, of justice, of freedom...of hope. Hope’s song is endless like that of a bird’s song. Hope is a song that we all sing...most of the time we don’t even realize that we are singing it at all. We all sing the song of hope whenever we are in a place of need for hope. It’s a silent song, one that no one has ever taught us the words to, yet we know them all by heart. The song of hope is endless because all throughout our life to the point of death, we are always going to be in a place of need for hope. We sing the song of hope in the back of our minds everywhere we go. We sing it when we are sad, we sing it when we are happy, and we will sing it when we die. It is a never ending cycle. The song of hope will never cease to end and our voices will still find ways of singing it, even when the hopeless try to rip our voice boxes out from our throats. Every little thing about a bird symbolizes hope. The way it flies without fear, the way it feeds its young, but most of all...its warmth. A bird keeps us warm in many ways that most have no knowledge of. A bird keeps us all individually warm in different ways. The homeless see a stray feather of a bird and might hold onto the feather for warmth while in the harsh and brutal cold. A child might see a bird in the sky and feel internally warm due to the inspiration it is pouring out into the child’s dull mind and heart. A young infant might feel the warmth of the stuffed bird that she is clutching in her pudgy little fingers as she sleeps. An old man near his death might see a painting of a bird that he created when he was just a young man and become moved to tears as old memories from his radical youth years come flooding back to him, filling his decaying body with a warmth that he had never felt before. A seasoned hunter feels the warmth of a bird as he drapes its limp, lifeless body that he had freshly slaughtered and puts the bird over his back in an attempt to keep himself warm. Everything in this world: from the walking, talking stick figures roaming the once barren earth, to the erie crow, bird of death...are all connected.