A woman heads out with her hat, stick, and foraging bag, half playful in her “exurban-agrarian” outfit, but the errand turns somber. She is listening for birds, and the quiet tells her most have flown or died. As she gathers apples, rose hips, and roadside leaves, she keeps hoping for passing geese, but the expected birdsong is missing. Her mind reaches for explanations—too few feral cats to blame, maybe pesticides—before settling on a grim phrase: “a war on song.” The mood is hushed and uneasy, mixing everyday domestic detail with quiet grief. She goes through familiar motions of foraging, yet the absence of birds turns the landscape into a place of loss rather than life.
It Is Quiet Out There — Summary
It is quiet out there now. She Takes her hat, stick and forage bag, Into which she slips her pruners, then Slides her feet into green clogs, feeling Quite exurban-agrarian, ready to look Under brush piles and into cottonwoods -- In every place that might consent to harbor Even a hint of birds' music. They have flown, The silence tells her; those that haven't died.
Out along the roadside she waves to cars, Understanding her neighbors have to drive, Then pockets up her apples, rose hips, leaves That now are turning away from green: cat's ear, High mallow, chicory, plantain, sow thistle, her Ears pricked for passing flights of geese.
Really, thinks she to herself, there ought Even now to be more birds. There are Not so many feral cats round here as that. Or could it be the sprays? She supposes War has been declared. A war on song.