The Silent Songbird

Once I wore the morning crown,

My throat a fountain of liquid gold,

Each note a bridge from earth to sky,

Each trill a story being told.

I sang the sunrise into being,

Called the dewdrops to their dance,

My voice the thread that wove the world

Into its daily circumstance.

But silence came like winter frost,

Creeping through my hollow bones,

The songs that once poured freely forth

Now trapped like prisoners in stones.

I open wide my yellow beak—

No music spills into the air,

Just breath and longing, hope and grief,

A prayer that no one else can hear.

The other birds still fill the trees

With melodies I used to know,

While I sit mute among the leaves,

A shadow of my former glow.

Yet in this quiet, I have learned

What I had never known before:

The world still turns without my song,

But oh, how much I miss the soar.

Sometimes I think I hear it still—

My voice an echo in the wind,

A memory of what once was,

A ghost of music, faint and thin.

Perhaps the silence is a gift,

A chance to listen, not just sing,

To hear the heartbeat of the earth

And all the songs that others bring.

But still I dream of dawn's first light,

When I might find my voice once more,

And lift my spirit to the sky

As I had done so often before.