Meadow Song

Song Nelson is an artist, naturalist and UC alumna. She has walked the East Meadow near daily during the pandemic and has come to know individual coyotes and owls living there. As a former student who once struggled with housing insecurity, Song appreciates the need for human housing, but opposes the sacrifice of the animal habitat in the East Meadow.

Meadow Song

Oh chancellor, may I bend your ear?
There’s a song I’d love for you to hear
A feathered chorus calling on the wing
Swallows circle and the bluebird sings
Coyotes come for the evening call
a golden eagle cries above them all
Dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn
Come hear the meadow’s song

Oh Chancellor, may I have your eyes?
Have you seen the sun go down and the full moon rise
On this gold to green, and green to gold
a legacy that is ages old
From this windy brow, down to the rolling to the sea
what would it take just to let it be?
Dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn
Come hear the meadow’s song

Oh Chancellor, may I take your hand?
Would you walk with me upon this open land
Follow the yellow breasted meadowlarks
bedding down for the coming dark
Please before the taking
Won’t you walk the ground you’re breaking
Dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn
come hear the meadow’s song

Oh Chancellor, may it touch your heart.
Before the dozer comes, before it ever starts
May the hunting owls’ shrieking in flight
and the howling haunt you in the dead of night
May the wildcats prowling, find their prey
when all the wilds have gone away.
Dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn
come hear the meadow’s song
Before it all is gone

Song Nelson May 2022
Attn: Chancellor Cynthia Larive
Dedicated to the East Meadow

Piano accompaniment, Michael Levy