Evensong

Written by Haley McNiff

Photography by Noah Laroia-Nguyen 

The birds here are confusedStart singing at three a.m.Full to their hollow bonesWith light pollution andI find myself singingThe same songNight-blindExtant Poet's note: I wrote this poem at - you guessed it - three a.m. while I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. I stubbornly refuse to close my window (despite how loud London can be), and I was having a weird spell of staying up so impossibly late that I noticed a trend. The birds outside began singing at three a.m. each night. I was stuck on how strange this was, hypothesizing why that would be. I wrote the first four lines in my iPhone notes in response and went to sleep. Later on, I fleshed it out, hypothesizing why I was up at that hour as well. I’ve never lived in a city of this size, and I think the constant activity of it all can change you. It didn’t feel like night to me because it didn’t sound like night, and it sure didn’t look like the night I had grown used to in the midwest. My body was responding in turn. But I think that’s kind of a beautiful thing. I’m in love with the last word, “extant.” I whipped out the old thesaurus to search for a better word than “alive” and found that gem: “present,” “enduring,” “existent.” The experience of adjusting to this place has definitely made me feel alive, but even beyond that, it’s shown me the extent of what I’m capable of as a person. So, in short, this is a little ode to London and the growing and changing I’ve undergone here.