Kym Tuvim: Listen

• MP3 short clip, hi-fi play (broadband)
• MP3 short clip, lo-fi play (modem)

Up until last January, I lived in the same lovely little rental house in the Madison Valley in Seattle. In the backyard, there used to be a 70 year old Laurel Hedge. Massive! Probably 30-35 feet long, 20 feet tall, and 8-10 feet wide. Every year, at the end of summer, starlings would come and have their babies there. So, for two months a year, I could hear them singing and chirping outside my bedroom window or on the back porch. It was a great respite from the crows that occupied my old neighborhood year-round.

I was on my backporch playing one summer day a couple years ago and started writing this song, with the birds doing their thing in the background.

Birdsong
(c) Kym Tuvim

Come sing me a sweet song
Like the birds in August
Every year, they return

Maybe it’s a mission
A pilgrimage, a vision
Brings them to my backyard
It’s the end of summer
In washed out colors

Ah-ooh
Ah-ohh

I can hear you breathing
The heavy sighs of thinking
You disappear, the way you do

Round the world will spin, dear
And fill your head with questions
Following the satellites
With no end, no beginning

Just us birds singing

Ah-ooh
Ah-ohh

Too much summer
Maybe you just need some thunder

Come sing me a sweet song
Like the birds in August
Every year, they return