The Ovenbird II

5/31/25

Yesterday was a glorious day at Hubbard Lake, Michigan: cloudless blue skies, a steady breeze, 65 degrees, a perfect day for a hike.  Rett and I joined some members of our extended family for a trek through Hubbard Lake Nature Preserve.  At about one-quarter mile along the trail, we heard a birdcall that sounded like “teacher-teacher-teacher”, so I stopped and consulted an app on my phone entitled, “Merlin Bird ID” from the Cornell Ornithology Lab.  The app identified the singer as The Ovenbird.

Immediately, a vivid memory washed over me..

Sometime circa 2000, I discovered a poem entitled, “The Oven Bird” by Robert Frost. 

The Oven Bird

There is a singer everyone has heard,

Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,

Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.

He says that leaves are old and that for flowers

Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.

He says the early petal-fall is past

When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers

On sunny days a moment overcast;

And comes that other fall we name the fall.

He says the highway dust is over all.

The bird would cease and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing not to sing.

The question that he frames in all but words

Is what to make of a diminished thing.

-Robert Frost

Frost’s speaker hears the ovenbird’s song as a lament for the loss that time inevitably brings; it’s as if the bird is wondering “what to make of” the world’s “diminished” vitality.  At the time, I was aware of my own vocal decline as a professional singer, so the poem had a direct hit. But I wasn’t yet ready to give up singing, so I turned to my dear friend and accomplished composer, Pete Tender, and asked him to set the poem to music.  Pete’s setting perfectly captures the essence of Frost’s poem.

I offer you a performance.

06 The Oven Bird

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"Acceptance is the solution to all my problems today".

I offer thanks to the Ovenbird, to Frost, to Pete Tender, and to the miraculous gift of life.

CPW