You wake as a warbler
while I wait for my crow to call.

You turn from the argument next door
just as I bend in to hear.

You sing with the commercials
and I imagine all of Hollywood burning.

Don’t imagine I am immune
to the kittens and babies and laughter.

I understand how light works
because I am the host to darkness.

So stretch and yawn and rise
to meet the day with your own glow.

It is my job to speak for the dark
when its value is being ignored

by those who forget that morning
is a dependent function of night.

For the past forty-five minutes
you’ve been hearing
a birdsong.

That listening has been
like rolling silk
across your fingers.

You wouldn’t know that bird
if it flew up to bite you,
though.

Two of them show up
at the window feeder.
Which one’s been singing,

or were they both
going at it and you never knew
there were two?

You grew up with a woman
who knew individual birds
by song, face and feather.

She would not have been confused
by any of this.  She would have told you
who sang what, would have shaken her head

at how obvious it was,
at how you couldn’t be bothered
to learn something as simple

as your neighbors’ names.
She lived one street
over, and she was OK.

The morning’s finally
sinking into daylight and the bird’s
farther away than when you woke.

Maybe tomorrow
you’ll sit outside and call to them,
your voice nothing like rolling silk,

but it’s the effort
that counts,
at least at first.