Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all...
poem by Emily Dickinson

Last night, as those of us keeping vigil in a field beyond the prison stood in shivering silence, candles burning, waiting for word that the state had murdered Philip Workman, I walked alone with my dripping candle toward the edge of the field nearest to the prison. As I approached the metal fence which cordoned us off, I noticed a sound that, until we became silent, was previously inaudible or perhaps simply unnoticed. I heard the song of one lone bird. Perhaps she was confused by all the glaring lights illuminating the prison and imagined that day was dawning, I don't know. But, she just kept singing.

Her singing was almost frantic at times. I think she was a mockingbird as I noted that the patterns continued to change but her song was constant..verse after verse after verse. On and on, she sang, as if her life or someone's depended on it. I found myself praying that somehow Philip could hear her singing--the last music to fall on his ears this side of eternity.

Perhaps her song was a dirge of sorts, sung for a dying man. Perhaps it was a song of lament for us, as citizens of Tennessee, in whose name a man was put to death with clear evidence that he did not commit a capital crime. Perhaps, it was a song of hope, that thing with feathers, which will not be stilled though despair would surely try to shut it up. Maybe her song was all of these things.

I will not soon forget the song of that little bird. And though my heart aches, though my body and spirit are weary, I hear her song, and I know that this is not the end of the story...