Bird Song

The food that’s meant to fill
doesn’t.  If I were to shovel dirt
spoon by spoon still the hole
would gape, always empty.  I
didn’t notice when it came, can’t
name a season when it hasn’t been
here black   empty as a nest where
all the chicks have flown leaving
small feathers, a piece of red string
woven at the edges.  Poppa was
an artist of sorts – undeclared but
you could see it in the way the twigs
braided, held the nest just so.

Voices swim on the humid night air, tree frogs acting like back-up singers.  I thought I knew the story but kept getting lost having confused a maze for a labyrinth.  A common confusion but deadly.  I missed the detail on how it is important to be able to navigate by the stars – their signs and portents as unreadable to me as Chinese glyphs.  I run my hand over the stones as if proximity will translate meaning but nearness is only that.  It is not intimacy.  Nests fall apart, even those strongly built, twined with yard, survivors of wind and rain.  A storm comes and all is asunder, sticks spread like tiny fallen trees across the ground.  Too often it is only an idea that is left to hold it all together.  And that is never enough.

Summer storms arrive
bringing clouds and lightning strikes
Mockingbird still sings