Only today do I hear voices, soft reminders of life in verdant cover.  Surprising, they are; so tiny, so young and inexperienced.

Yet already I hear upon the wind each individual.  As I stand and listen, their responses betray a cadence independent of the other siblings hidden in the nest.

They respond with silence save for one event: the arrival of a parent.  Until charcoal wings appear and breach their cover, each hatchling’s song remains silent, unheard.

Oh but when mother or father appear…  Then children rise up, their tiny bodies still uncertain, beaks pushed toward the heavens in anticipation and want.

And then they cry out.  With raspy voices twittering and squeaking in the tongue of infancy, they speak their desires in languages I do not understand yet comprehend in fullness.

I hear hunger.  I hear demanding.  I hear wishes and dreams as yet undefined and unfulfilled.

Of all the rash and broken promises made in the name of birth, however, none rests more heavily on my spirit than “I will protect you.”

No parent should ever convey such empty pledges, for they can never be realized.

Today, after arriving home, upon the ground I did find one of the three.  Already covered with ants and circled by flies, its exposure to the elements and predators left little chance for its survival.

I wonder how difficult the decision was when the parents realized they could do nothing to help their child once it had fallen from the nest.  I wonder…

With two more begging for nourishment and no way to retrieve the dislocated sibling, how long did they stay by its side before giving up and returning to the duties necessary to ensure the survival of the rest of the brood?

I can never know.  The damage had already been done when I set my eyes upon the smallest of casualties.

Drenched in hot sunlight baking the late afternoon, a minuscule life was spent there on the ground, there beneath the bushes that otherwise rest some distance below safe haven.

Will my tear dropped carelessly beside it dry before one of the many inhabitants of this area dispatches the carrion with cold abandon?

Again, I will never know.

I refuse to watch as Nature takes what she will when she will, as she forces from the pockets of her children the tithes she will have at any cost.

Sometimes her toll is too great a burden for me to bear.  Do these mockingbird parents feel the same?