This poem is from the summer 2026 edition of Mobile Baykeeper’s print quarterly, CURRENTS. The magazine is mailed to active members who have given more than $50 in the past year. To get on the magazine’s mailing list, donate here.
Text and photo by Susan Rouillier
They returned today, February twenty-eighth,
as if the date was inked in an invisible journal
long before we began keeping track of such things.
First was the scout, alone against the pale morning.
He circled the tiny houses by Mobile Bay —
gourds swaying lightly in the brackish air,
small compartments waiting like unopened letters.
He hovered at each doorway, looked inside,
tilted his head to measure the quiet —
last year’s dust, a stray feather, the faint shape of memory.
Satisfied, he rose higher,
turned toward the south,
and carried the message in his wings.
Not long after, they arrived —
a rush of dark purple against the sky.
The Bay held them gently.
Water shone beneath their arcs.
Even marsh grasses seemed to lean closer
to witness the reunion.
They sang together — joyful, busy and reassuring,
voices spilling chatter into the air.
No hesitation — they flew straight through the openings,
as if stepping back to their own bedrooms
after a long, patient journey.
February twenty-eighth, precise and unannounced,
a covenant older than clocks, truer than our forecasts.
We, standing below, felt the soft relief
of something returning exactly when it should.
Underneath it all is a tender reassurance —
that life remembers how to continue,
and beauty is not finished with us yet.
