my father used to say the voice of a sandhill crane sounds
like dragging a stick down the length of a fence
just for the sake of making the noise
I'm here I exist look at me I woke up your dog
he said it like it almost ruined the animal
in all their bloody forehead stretch neck wide wing glory
like thier voices almost don’t deserve a home in their feathered chests
but we drive out to see them anyway
in whichever slimy brown field they’ve picked
to roost this year
I watch them planting their skinny hollow boned asses in dead autumn grass
smack in the middle of a Michigan farmer’s 25 acre back yard
everything is cold & damp and squishes under bird bellies and bird feet
& nothing is comfortable
& they slurp chunks of whatever is easily edible and probably dead out
of shallow rainwater streams
but they sing to each other
through jumbled messy pebble in a blender throats
they are comfortable
& I find myself sitting with the question of home
freezing & wet in my gut
rattling in my esophagus
& my bird feet twitch and I look east and west and up
maybe if I had hollow bones
I might also be gifted with a compass in my chest like them
I wonder if the sandhill cranes have a marsh at that end of their journey
that they call grandmas house
I want to ask them
listen to them spin their vocal chords at me
as they shatter silence over and over again
deafening and obnoxious
claiming even more space than their five foot three inch wing span
I stand five foot three
maybe if I screamed like a crane I would feel bigger
& more worthy of the space I fill
maybe if my voice too echoed in an open field
I would feel like I deserve to make the sound
is home being comfortable with your mass in all its forms
knowing the space is yours just because it’s you
can one claim home in the room inside their own empty leg bones
or would that be too easy